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Last Modified January 5th 1998
December 1st With the wing positioned on the workbench and my feet slowly receiving from the show I was ready for some more work. I trimmed the end of the aileron then bonded the wing tip foam to the end of the wing. I fitted the flap jig to the root and bonded my 3mm flap spacers into the closeout before starting on flange sanding.
December 2nd More flange sanding. I think the easiest way to get this flange sanded back to the correct point is to check where the flange is touching, sand back that bit only and then, once everything fits freely, sand back the whole flange so everything is in line. I suspect that at the rate I am going that will be in a few days! I trimmed back the inside edge of the flap to line the flap plate with the outrigger plates.
December 3rd No building, busy putting up a Christmas tree.
December 4th Fitted the nut plates to the landing light plate and did some more flange sanding. Summer temperatures have arrived this sanding is proving to be very warm work.
December 5th No building but I did do some planning work on my instrument panel
December 6th Laid up the first layer of cloth on the wing tip and did some more flange sanding. I am not quite down to the level of the other wing yet but getting close.
December 7th Finished sanding back the flange. The flap now sits comfortably in its jig and is ready for attachment. Flipped the wing over over and laid up the second side of the tip. I reattached the wing incidence block which had parted company from the wing while I was getting ready for the show last week. When I originally attached this block to the wing I had a suspicion that it might get knocked off at some point during the build so I had carefully drawn around the outline of the glue to assist with reattachment. Putting the alignment block back in place was a simple task thanks to the marks. To finish the day off I knocked a pot of resin off the bench and onto my right foot. Won't have to worry about cleaning that shoe again!
December 8th Flipped the wing over again and bonded the flap into place into the closeout and the now reattached flap jig. Fitted the W19 and W20 plates and assembled the outrigger mounting plates. The outrigger plates went together a lot easier that the other wing. I am scratching my head a little over the W19 plate. Unlike the other wing where the interception line between the wing plate and the flap plate occurred just before the flap plate, on this wing the two lines do not intercept until they are aft of the flap plate! This makes it just a bit difficult to establish where to bend the plate. If I could move the wing plate 3mm towards the root then all would be fine. All the plate positions are correct in relation to the foam blocks and all of the wing plates align with the flap plates fore and aft. Having confirmed that the flap is also correctly positioned in relation to the outrigger plates I can only come to the conclusion that either one of the wing cores is shorter or one of the flap cores is longer than the design specification.
December 9th Trimmed back the inside of the wing tip and prepared it for the layup. I then turned my attention back to the W19 plate. I have two options as to how to handle the misalignment and that is to either retain the original W19 placing and insert a shim on the inside edge of the wing plate or to place the W19 plate on the outside of the flap plate. I prefer the option of placing the W19 plate on the outside of the flap plate though I will confirm this with Andy at Europa first.
December 10th Checked the aileron movement. Like the other wing I have insufficient movement so it was out with the dremel and sanding spline to remove enough to permit the required movement. If I was making the ailerons again I would definitely leave the counterbalance arm layups until I had fitted the wing tips. Clamped the outrigger plates and W20 plates to their respective wing plates. I use stirring sticks as packers between the clamp and the wing plates as the wing plates have yet to be primed and can be easily scratched if not careful.
December 11th Heard back from Andy. He concurs that the best method of fixing my W19 problem is to fit the plate to the outward side of the flap plate. This requires reversing the bolt direction to ensure that the plastic washers are still against the moving flap plate but beyond that there is nothing else required other than to bend the W19 plate where the two plate lines intersect. No building today, I have a visitor from Australia who has just ordered his Europa XS.
December 12th Bent the W19 plate to suit then drilled and fitted the W19 and W20 plates.
December 13th Drilled and mounted the outrigger plates.
December 14th No building.
December 15th Made
up the outrigger mechanism and tested the flap for operation.
This one works as well. I must be doing something right!
December 16th Laid up the aileron counterbalance arms.
December 17th Trimmed up the counterbalance arms and checked the aileron for operation. I now have enough freedom of operation to meet the design specification.
December 18th Made up the aileron push rods. Drilling these has become a lot simpler with the tube jig that I made up earlier and I can now get the hole alignment right on the mark.
December 19th Fitted the aileron push rods. Well, that is it. Other than the bellcrank inspection holes (which I am going to leave until the surface finishing stage) and the surface finishing itself, my flying surfaces are complete. The next phase of the build is oriented towards assembly rather than manufacturing.
December 20th
Brought the fuselage kit in from the store and scrubbed down all
of the surfaces to remove the mould release film. I then trimmed
the glass back around the windscreen before taking the top of the
fuselage back to the store. The top won't be required for quite
some time and I need the space in the workshop.
December 21st Marked out the trim lines on the fuselage base and the cockpit module then trimmed back the fuselage base which at this stage could be easily mistaken to be a boat. I am doing the trimming outdoors as the noise and dust created by my dremel drill is too much to be able to complete the work indoors. The cockpit module requires quite a few holes to be cut into it along predefined lines so I took to it with a Permagrit slitting disk fitted to my Dremel. The hole cutting is fairly simple but it does help to have the module up on a table so that it can be swung around to get to all of the locations that need cutting back. By the end of the afternoon I had completed all of the holes on the starboard side.
December 22nd Attacked the port
side of the cockpit module! All of the holes are marked with trim
lines and I followed these other than for one of the seat area
cubby holes on the passenger side. On this side the reinforcing
ply is slightly offset and rather than cut into the ply I altered
the hole to fit around the ply. Once all the holes had been cut
and the module washed down I marked up the bulkhead insert for
fitting later. With the cockpit module back inside I turned it
over on its stand and started work on the thigh support area
reinforcing ribs. These are made out of plywood and require
shaping to fit into place. I use a Japanese pull saw to cut ply
as it slices through the ply like butter. This is the one item I
have ever bought off one of those interminable "Call
0800...." adverts and I am well pleased with my purchase!
December 23rd Continued work on the ply reinforcing ribs. Once the ribs were made I epoxied them in place making sure that there was going to be enough clearance for the control rods that will pass between them. I also cut out the base for the port headrest cubby hole.
December 24th - 31st A
busy period working on the cockpit module. First job was to glass
the plywood ribs and cubby hole bases into place. These are held
in location with bid strips and, other than keeping the bubbles
at bay, are a simple job taking just two afternoons to complete.
The next task was to check establish how the cockpit module was
going to fit into the fuselage base. This kept me well
entertained as there are locations where the curve of the
fuselage and the curve of the cockpit module just do not match.
Having spent quite a bit of time coming to the conclusion that
there are going to be some areas requiring filling with Redux and
flox I drilled holes and bolted to two pieces together. All in
all the fit is pretty good and I did end up with something that
actually resembles the base of an aircraft!
Having removed the cockpit module from the fuselage
base and returned the base to the store it was time to start
working on mounting the controls in the cockpit module. First to
be fitted was the brake cylinder and handle. The cylinder itself
is bolted onto a plywood reinforcing plate that gets inserted in
the foam. This bit was easy to do, establishing where to cut the
slot for the handle was not!. In the end I picked the location by
using a #1 eyeball and ended up only a few mm out of line. The
slot will be covered with a plate later on so I have a bit of
freedom when it comes to the slot width in the module itself. The
next task was to drill two holes for the control rods to pass
through the seat front. I will not describe what a task this is
as there would be too many expletives used. Suffice to say, even
when I had established what the true centre of the control column
I still ended up having to remove some glass from the edge of one
of the holes. You will also note from the picture that the
supporting plate for the pilots side stick isn't centred with the
seat even though that is how the unit was supplied by Europa.
Once the holes for the stick mounting bushes were drilled I
wasn't happy that there wood be enough support, the screw holes
on one side being too close to the edge of the large hole and one
of the screws on the other side missing the support plate
completely. To rectify this I made a sandwich layup of carbon
fibre and bid and laid this up behind the holes then, once set,
recut the large hole. The mounting nuts now have a good strong
surface to support them.
