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Last Modified February 9th 1998
January 1st - 4th Lots of metalwork to prepare! I spent a couple of days making up control rodding and then priming them ready for assembly. With the pieces ready I spent the next two days rigging up the aileron controls into the cockpit module. This takes a lot of patience as you have to get the two rods in line within three planes! A thoroughly entertaining task I can tell you. Once I was satisfied that everything was in line I drilled the bolt mounting holes then test rigged the rodding. The pilots side is so free that the control column housing will swing under its own weight without the joystick in place, the passenger side is slightly stiffer but is still very free. While I had some "spare" time I did some preparatory work on other pieces of metalwork. Once you get to this stage you realise that unless you have the build carefully planned you can actually lose time simply from the fact that a piece of metal needs to be painted before fitting into the final location.
January 5th - 6th Painting days.
January 7th Temporarily fitted the port control stick and aligned the rear aileron drive arm. The manual doesn't have you add the control stick until later but I found that there was insufficient flat surface on the control stick mounting arm to guarantee a good angular measurement. Six holes have to be drilled through the rear of the shaft and, apart from the fact that getting a drill into the tight space is an exercise in itself, I found that the hole spacing leaves very little space between the rivet head and the bearing plate. It is really important to measure the spacing from the full flat of the flange and not simply place a ruler against the flange where there is a slight curve. Of course I only discovered this once I had centre punched the holes so had to reposition the holes slightly during the drilling process.
January 8th Aligned both aileron drive arms and bonded the rear bearings in place.
January 9th The final stage of fitting the rear bearing flange is to pull rivets through the pre drilled holes. The port side was fine but two of the holes on the starboard side were too close to the tufnol bearing. I had measured everything correctly and it took me quite a while to work out just what was wrong. After a lot of head scratching I finally discovered that the starboard cockpit module channel was 4mm longer than the port side. The variance was just sufficient to place the rivets too close to the plate. I came to the conclusion that the best fix was to add two rivets at the 0 degrees and 180 degrees positions on the tube then add rivets with cut down heads purely as hole fillers in the original holes. I phoned Roger at Europa and he agreed to the fix.
January 10th Final rigging of the aileron tubes. The alignment of the tufnol bearings turns out to be really critical in order to get everything free and easy. I applied flox to the tufnol faces according to the manual and tightened the outboard nuts on the rear blocks. I then tightened the two nuts on the shortest edge of the forward block only enough to keep it in place. From then it was simply a case of tweaking the remaining nuts until everything swang freely. I did have to back off the outboard nut on the port side to ensure the tufnol block aligned properly. Once I was happy then I packed the gaps with flox.By the time I had finished if I let go of the control stick at full deflection it would overswing the centre, return back past the centre and then settle. Once the flox had set I added the aileron cross link rod and set the two control sticks so that they were vertical together. The final task for this stage of the build was to add the two outer link rod arms.
With the cockpit module aileron controls fitted I turned my attention to the wings. Holes were drilled in the spars to house the bolts that the aileron bellcranks would swing on. To get these absolutely vertical to the spar I first jigged the wings so the spars were horizontal in both planes. I then called on the combined resources of the rest of the family to sight my drill bit as I drilled through the spar. A counterbored hole has to be made in the front face of the spar in order to keep the bolt head clear of the surface and also ensure that there was enough bolt thread to house the nut. I drilled each hole a few mm at a time until I had sufficient thread free above where the nut would fit. This turned out to be a lot deeper that the manual's 0.2 inches though previous correspondence from Europa on the mailing list indicated that this was quite normal.
I had a moment of panic when I realised that the next stage of the build requires the cockpit module to be placed on end and the spars fed through the spar. Actually I did know this was going to happen but what I didn't realise was that the spars were going to be 1 metre from the ground which would put the trailing edge of the wing awfully close to my up and over garage door. A quick measurement showed that I would still have 10cm or so to spare! With the wings sitting so high I am not happy to have it sitting on blocks as a knock or a gust of wind will know everything over. I am going to make a new jig to ensure that everything will stay safely in place during the next stages of the aileron setup which will require one wing to sit outside of the garage door for around eight hours at a time while the glue sets.
Due to the fact that there are several long gluing drying sessions in the next build period and I can only do these at the weekends I expect the next stage to take quite a few weeks.
January 11th Went down to Gary Spicer's workshop and riveted up the aileron bellcranks. Once I was back home I applied primer to the bearing housings and rivets. I filed back the tips of the spars to so that they would fit into the spar housings then opened up one of the spar housing holes to 1 inch diameter so that it would fit over the cockpit module bushing. I sanded back the cockpit module where the housing and bushings would fit then cleaned the bushing holes and surface with acetone. My final job for the day was to apply thin tape to the spars so that glue wouldn't get onto the wrong places. I decided to cover the spar completely and then cut holes in the tape where glue would be applied in order to provide maximum protection. It just so happens that the packing tape we use at work is very thin and turns out to be ideal for this job.
January 12th-13th No building, vistors at home.
January 14th Painted up the bellcranks. I had an email from Martin Tuck in Wichita. He had read my previous entry in the log stating that I was going to make a jig so that I can set the wings up. It appears that the earlier version of the manual had you do the set up with the wings upside down and he reported that he didn't have a problem doing the setup. This considerably simplifies the build process so I have followed the earlier technique.
January 15th Fitted the bellcranks to the wings. The picture above, taken once the wings were setup, shows the bellcrank in the lower right corner.
January 16th With Carol's help I measured up the aileron drive rod length and made up the drive rod ends. Setting these up was a simple process of adjusting the end pieces until both the bellcrank and the aileron were correctly aligned.
January 17th No building
January 18th
Now the moment of truth! Would the wings fit correctly to the
cockpit module? Having bought a few more up stacking cartons to
act as wing supports I set the wings up outboard of the cockpit
module and spent some time adjusting the angle so that the holes
would overlap correctly once they overlapped in the cockpit
module. I trial fitted the aligning pins in each of the spars and
discovered I had to clean each of the holes out as resin from the
wing layups had left a very thin film which was preventing easy
insertion. With everything ready I positioned all three items so
that they were in their correct locations and slid the pins into
place. Everything fitted together easily and, once the setup nuts
were tightened on the pins it was a easy job to adjust everything
to the correct alignment.
The major stage of the build will be to bond the pin and spar cap guides into place with Redux adhesive. I can only do these major setups at weekend as my garage isn't big enough to do the setups without six feet of wing poking outside so I am hoping for fine weather at weekends for quite a few weekends to come!
January 19th - 22nd No building. Suffering from withdrawal symptoms :-(
January 23rd I intend fitting an inspection panel into my fuel tank as the thought of not being able to get things out of the tank without major surgery once fitted to the aircraft is not a thought I like to entertain. The inspection plate is also a handy place to mount a capacitance probe. I am broadly following the design by Dave Simpson which is PFA approved. The only change I am making is to the way the clamp plate is lipped and for that I am following a design provided by my father who just happens to be a pressure vessel engineer! As I happen to have a spare fuel tank I experimented with methods of cutting the top hole. Cutting with a craft knife proved to be hard work so I resorted to "drilling" holes with a soldering iron and then trimming with a craft knife. I made sure I had plenty of ventilation and used a full face mask while I was doing this as I suspect that the fumes created during the process are quite nasty.
January 24th
Having spent the morning help my brother-in-law and sister-in-law
move house I needed a cool job. Due to the shape of the tank I am
going to develop a small microprocessor based unit to linearise
the capacitance probe. In order to do this I needed to measure
the tank. I set the tank up besides my Fuel Tank Immersion Test
Facility (seen in the background and usually occupied by my sons
on hot days) and proceeded to check the contents by adding 2
litres of water at a time and measuring the level with a steel
rule. I found that the addition of some red food colouring helped
the process considerably as trying to see clear water through a
white plastic tank proved to be juuust a little bit difficult.
Now that I have the tank specifications I can spend a few hours
in front of the TV designing the circuitry.
January 25th Spar cap set up day. This proved to be quite a simple task. I rigged the wings so that they were roughly in line with their final location and applied flox and Redux to the spar end cap front faces and Reduxed the cockpit module pin bush into place. The spars were then aligned with each other using the spar pins and the cockpit module then mated to the spars. I then adjusted the alignment wings and the cockpit module until everything was aligned correctly. While the Redux was setting I alodined and then, where required, primed my remaining metalwork. Seven hours after bonding the caps I pulled the pins and, with a bit of a pull, separated the parts.
January 26th The
next stage of the setup is to align the cockpit and spar mounted
aileron bellcranks and fit the bellcrank mounting bracket to the
cockpit module. The manual has you dismantle the aileron
bellcrank, bolt a piece of 1/4" rod to the mounting plate,
clamp the plate to the cockpit module and then insert wood shims
until the spar bellcrank hole and the cockpit plate hole are
concentric. Having spent a while thinking about what was trying
to be achieved which is the concentricity of the two bellcranks I
came to the conclusion that there was a much simpler and possibly
much more accurate method of achieving the correct alignment.
As far as I can work out, the best way of aligning
the two bellcranks during the setup is to actually have them
aligned along a common axis during the setup. The first thing I
did was to insert the rod, together with a EURO001 washer through
the bellcrank mounting hole from the front of the spar. This then
passes through the spar mounted bellcrank, complete with spacers
and washers. A nut was threaded down the rod from the other side
and tightened against the spar mounted bellcrank. The rod must
not protrude beyond the front face of the spar otherwise you have
to dismantle the setup to get the wings mounted! This initial
setup firmly established the alignment of the bellcranks.
Another nut was threaded onto the rod followed by
the cockpit mounted bellcrank complete with its washers and this
was followed by the mounting bracket and a further EURO001 washer
and nut. The wings were rigged and the incidence of the wings and
cockpit module checked to within 0.5 degrees using my digital
spirit level. The nuts holding the mounting bracket and cockpit
mounted bellcrank were adjusted until the the bracket touched the
cockpit module in at least one location. The alignment of the
mounting plate was then adjusted to vertical and the four
mounting screw holes drilled in the cockpit module.
Having backed off the mounting plate and waxed the
flanges so that they can be removed later, flox and Redux was
applied to the flanges and the flanges offered to the cockpit
module. Greased bolts were inserted from the other side of the
module. The end nut on the bracket positioning rod was tightened
up against the inner nut which had retained the previously set up
position and the four flange mounting nuts hand tightened to hold
the flange in place. Fillets of flox and Redux were laid up
around the flanges to assist with relocating the brackets once
they are removed.
Once the Redux had set I removed the rods with the aid of a cut down spanner and derigged the wings.
January 27th Sometime during the past few months my starboard wing must have had a knock on the leading edge close to the root. I noticed a crack and delamination of around 1.5cm at this point. I sanded back the delaminated area and found the delamination occurred between the reinforcing layers of bid and the uni cloth so I proceeded with a standard surface fix. The area around the damage was swarfed back at around 1 inch per layer and the area around the swarf cleaned and sanded for layup. I laid up three layers of bid over the prepared area then, once the resin had set, sanded back the glass to recover the surface finish.
January 28th -30th No building, visitors again.
January 31st Reassembled the cockpit module aileron assembly and checked the initial alignment. Now that the wings can be rigged to the cockpit module the next stage of the build is to get the ailerons so that they travel 23.5 degrees up and 20 degrees down. Of course the trick is to get them to achieve these angles together! The port wing gave me 23.5 degrees up quite comfortably but the starboard was binding around the 22 degree mark when the wing was horizontal. I dismounted the wing and took off another 2mm from the wing flange which now is the same depth as the other wing. I was concerned that I had taken too much off the other wing but I now see that the flange does have to be quite small in order to clear the aileron counterbalance arm layups.
