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Last Modified April 14th 1998
March 1st - 2nd To
fill a couple of evenings I worked on the doors. The first job
that was required was to layup a cover plate where the mechanism
cutout will be. Cling film was wrapped around the area of the
door where the layup will go and four layers of bid laid up over
the cling film. The next evening this was removed and the cutting
began. The locations to be cut out are marked with very thin
lines on the door so I highlighted these with a black marker and
attached masking tape outside of the lines. To cut the holes I
used a milling bit in my dremel and sliced the hole out. The
edges were smoothed out with a permagrit spline before going on
to drill the holes. I established the centres of the holes with a
1/16 inch drill bit then opened them up to 1/8 before expanding
them to fit the bushings with a tapered reamer.
March 3rd - 4th Experimented with fuel tank positioning. Working out its exact position with the module upside down is not a simple task and I would hate to get its position wrong.
March 5th - 7th Partially trimmed back the rear bulkhead that will be fitted to the lower fuselage moulding. To establish the position of the bulkhead it is important to ensure that the moulding is positioned correctly and this really can't be determined correctly until the cockpit module is bonded into the moulding.
March 8th - 9th
Having decided that I wasn't really comfortable with the method I
was using to establish the final position of the tank I removed
the cockpit module from its stand and inserted it into the lower
fuselage. With the fuselage rigged so that it was in the correct
shape I could see how the tank would finally fit against the
cockpit module. So that the tank location could be reproduced
with the cockpit module outside of the fuselage and upside down
again I made some space markers out of plastic strip and tacked
them to the side of the tank. When the cockpit module was
inverted on its stand it was relatively easy to reproduce the
position of the tank within the cockpit module by lining up all
of the marks on the plastic strips.
March 10th - 11th Two
inspection hatches are required in the underside of the fuselage
to give access to the fuel tank outlets at service time. I am
following an alternative construction method detailed in the
Europa User newsletter to create these. The area of the
inspection holes is scuff sanded and the two holes marked out on
the glass. The inner 100mm diameter ring is the hole while the
outer 125mm diameter ring is the edge of the flange. A sheet of
peel ply is wet out over the markings and then four layers of bid
(wet out on the bench first) is laid up on the peel ply. The lot
is then covered with another layer of peel ply. When dry the top
layer of peel ply is ripped off, the markings transferred to the
glass and the layup extracted (there is no other word for it)
from the fuselage before ripping off the lower piece of peel ply.
March 12th The next stage of the inspection hatch construction was to draw another circle of 200mm diameter for each hole and cut the layup to this size. A 100mm hole was made in the centre of these two circles to create a reinforcing ring.
March 13th No building
March 14th Now
the hazardous bit! Each hole needed to be cut out of the fuselage
along the 125mm diameter line. I started the cut with a small
craft knife blade and then cut the hole out with a junior hacksaw
blade mounted in a pad saw handle. The fuselage cuts really
easily and the job only took a few minutes. The holes are
circular to within my acceptable standard but I wouldn't say they
are absolutely perfect. The next stage was to push back the foam
within the hole and around the panel and apply flox to prevent
ingress of moisture. While the flox was setting I did some more
trimming work on the rear bulkhead.
March 15th - 16th Sanded back the flox filler then marked the reinforcing ring with six equispaced lines to show where to fit the lock nuts later. The reinforcing rings were then epoxied to the inside of the fuselage, clamped in place and left to set. The rear bulkhead was the target of my attention for the rest of the day. First job was to five minute epoxy a pair of wooden spacers in place to establish the overall shape of the tailplane support area. After scratching my head for a while I noted that the key thing here is that all measurements are taken at the base of the joggle where the foam filling gives way to glass. The other thing that needs to be established is a distance of 255mm between the outside of the future torque tube hole location. As this location is located in an undercut this proved to be a challenge until Carol suggested I put a piece of wire through the hole and take my measurements from that. I knew I married her for a reason! With a piece of wire suitable marked and a cleco lock clamped on one mark I fed the wire through the 1/16 inch holes I had previously drilled at the torque tube centres. Another cleco lock on the other side at 255mm and a pair against the glass on the inside walls resulted in the spacing being firmly fixed in place at the correct setting. The other alignment mark is located on the underside of the tail and to transfer this to the inside where it is needed I drilled a 1/16 inch hole. This hole can be easily filled later and having a defining mark on the inside of the fuselage certainly helps with vertical alignment. I then proceeded to sand back the bulkhead bit by bit, marking where it was obstructed with a spirit marker, until I had a fit.
March 17th Marked out the fuel tank where my fuel gauge is going to be inserted and checked that it wasn't going to impede on the baggage bay.
March 18th No building. Giving a presentation to the New Zealand Electronics Institute about electronics in experimental aircraft.
March 19th - 20th No building
March 21st -22nd Not
a lot of building this weekend due to other commitments. I
drilled out the two holes in the fuselage where the fuel drains
will go. This is an optional item on the Europa but one I
consider mandatory. Each side of the tank has its own fuel drain
with these being positioned mid fuselage. Once the holes were
drilled I pushed back the foam and floxed the gap. I brought up
the main pitch tube from the store and riveted one of the end
caps in place then spent some time shaping the handle for the
brake lever. I am making the handles out of nylon rod and, having
first amazed myself by being able to cut the rod down its length
in a straight line, I went on to shape the end. To do this I
mounted my dremel with a fine stone grinding disk in my vice and
used this to grind away the nylon. I found that you can get a
really good finish this way if you keep the speed low - too fast
and the nylon melts! Once the shape was established a smooth
finish to the nylon was achieved with a finishing rub of 600 grit
wet and dry.
March 23rd Fitted the fuel drain sockets to the body with Redux.
March 24th - 31st No building. Financial end of year looms!
