Last Modified April 28th 1998

Europa #272, The Ecstasy - and the Agony

April 1st - 3rd No building, Computerworld Expo show.

April 4th The Westach capacitance fuel gauge arrived from Aircraft Spruce so I spent some time confirming that I had the positioning correct before drilling a 1 1/2 inch hole in the top of the tank to position the sender. I spent the rest of the day helping John Caukwell layup the first side of one of his Windrose glider wings. These wings are twice the length of the Europa's and our experience with building the Europa wings certainly helped when doing a layup of this size.

April 5th Having drilled the five mounting holes in the tank I then proceeded to work out how to get the tank backing plate through the hole. I abandoned using the Westach backing plate and used the backing plate from the universal probe mount kit that I also purchased at the same time as the sender. This backing plate is a ring so I cut across the ring, fed some wire through the holes to ensure I didn't lose it in the tank and then spiralled the ring into the central hole. With the ring pulled hard back against the inside of the tank I applied Hermatite gold gasket sealant to the gasket and sender then screwed the assembly together. It all looked fine so I sealed all the outlet holes in the tank and applied a few lung fulls of air to the tank before sealing the inlet. The tank bulged noticeably under the pressure which is more than it will ever see in use. I checked the fuel gauge seals with soapy water and was satisfied that the seal was good.

April 6th - 9th No building. Graham and Joan Singleton visiting from England.

April 10th First tank to fuselage layup. Having first positioned the tank in accordance with the manual I proceeded with the trickiest of the three layups. The cloth has to be positioned to form a T with one of the arms of the T trapped between a temporary spacer and the forward bulkhead. After dumping a lot of glass in the bin I found the easiest way to do this was to lay the first piece of cloth up against the bulkhead then insert the spacer and fold the cloth back down over the spacer to lay onto the tank. The second layer of glass is then simply laid up over the tank and lapped onto the bulkhead to complete the job. I used scrap blue foam as the spacer and, like many before me, chose to leave it as a permanent part of the fuselage.

April 11th The second layup is a lot simpler than the first and simply consists of a layup of cloth positioned between the rear of the tank and the bulkhead lapping into the tunnel. A second piece of cloth goes between the tunnel roof and the tank. As with all layups using bid I lay these up on cling film on my bench before carrying the wet layup to the aircraft.

April 12th Final tank layup. A reproduction of the second but over the rest of the rear bulkhead. Happy that I was now ready for the next major stage of construction I buzzed off to help John with his second wing layup.

April 13th The layups looked good so I fitted the tank outlets and refitted the wing brackets. Just to make sure all was well I took my dummy wing spars and fitted them to the aircraft. SCREAM. The wings don't (many expletives deleted) fit anymore!!!! The instructions in the manual say that the tank base should be in line with the projected line of the the fuselage. What they don't say is that with the new smaller fuel tank design doing this results in the tank impeding the spars by about 5mm and the layups exacerbate the problem further. What I should have done was to ensure that these was a clear line between the wing brackets before laying up the tank. The manual didn't mention this at all and I am rather annoyed that Europa didn't identify this potential problem in the manual.

April 14th No choice but to get the hacksaw out an cut the tank out of the fuselage. This took an hour of hard sweat before I could get it out. With the tank sitting on the bench I proceeded to remove the glass layups from the tank. The manual states that the glass will not adhere to the tank but I dispute that statement. The glass forms a very strong primary bond to the tank though this can be broken due to the flexibility of the tank itself. It took close to an hour and a half the extract the layups from the curved surfaces of the tank but the layup along the flat upper lip is there the stay. I used every technique suggested to me to remove glass and that layup refuses to move or delaminate from the tank. I will sand the edge of the layup to alight with the tank edge and sand back to the surface to give me a good bond to the new layups. Admittedly there will be a slight weight penalty associated with leaving these six layers of bid along the lip but I am not going to buy another tank as this will delay my building by over two months while I bring it in. I now have great respect for the strength of my glass layups and even more respect for the strength of flox corners!!

April 15th - 17th I could say that I was too busy but to be honest, after the fuel tank incident I need a bit of a break.

April 18th No building. Flew to Tokoroa and Taupo. Greased on some crosswind landings. Feeling happier now.

April 19th Flew back from Tokoroa. Finished off cleaning up the old layups. I found the Dremel sanding disk to be really good at removing the bulky layup areas and for generally cleaning up the rest of the glass. I scrubbed down the tank and then took it outside and gave the inside a good flushing with water to make sure none of the dust had got into it. I reinserted the tank into its position and checked out how it should sit to ensure that spar clearance was maintained.

In order to get the tank out previously I had to cut away a small section of the bulkhead edge around the tank filler bosses. To put this piece back I made up a two ply bid layup and placed it across the gap then positioned the cut out piece back in place. A temporary reinforcing piece was positioned on the on the side away from the glass and the lot cleco locked in place to set.

April 20th Checked the layup and was well pleased with my work. A bit of light sanding had everything looking like the original other than the new reinforcing glass on the lip. Was pleased to receive an email from another builder who was about to do his tank layups and, as a result of my posting about this problem, discovered that he would have had the same issue with the spars if he had continued as he had. I am glad that my "discovery" saved him from a frustrating experience. Spent a few hours playing with the tank positioning. The challenge was to get the tank in a position that gave me clearance around the rear tank vent, kept the tank lip clear of the spar and also allowed the tank spacers to be inserted to keep the tank clear of the control rodding. Ideally with all three of these set the rear of the tank would also be parallel with the rear bulkhead but I cannot achieve it. In the end I found that lifting up the rear of the tank by around 3mm and letting the tank spacers establish the position of the tank front gave me the best position. In fact it gave me the only position that would actually work! I talked to Roger at Europa who confirmed that the actual tank position was not critical providing that the load is dissipated by the bulkheads and not by the bottom of the fuselage. He also confirmed that adding temporary packing at the rear bulkhead was acceptable if the gap was too large and that these spacers could be left in place if made out of blue foam.

April 21st Emptied and recalibrated my resin pump. The original hardener I had was due to life expire at the end of the month so this was a good opportunity to clean everything out, change the grommets and recalibrate the pump.

April 22nd No building, EAA NZ tour dinner.

April 23rd Cut out the cloth for the tank layups.

April 24th Checked one last time that everything really was going to fit this time!!

April 25th The tank layups. Now that I have some experience at doing this I can say that the experience can be painless if you really think about what you are doing. The following method works well.

Setup the tank to the correct position. I found that four stirring sticks at the back and seven at the front gave a good position. Confirm that the spar will still sit properly. Make a tank front spacer out of spare blue foam. You will also require the tank spacers that are made later on in the chapter to confirm clearance around the control rodding.

Cut out six full lengths of bid on the bias to be 14cm wide. Lay these up on cling film to create two layups each of three layers of bid. Cover one of these layups with cling film and then cut both to match the distance between the two U shaped brackets.

Take the layup with film on both sides and lay it on the tank lip so that it butts against the vertical face of the tank and allow the overlap to hand over the edge of the tank lip. This establishes the position of the cloth relative to the front bulkhead. Remove the top layer of film, lift the cloth and, working along its length, place all of the cloth on the vertical face of the front bulkhead. Squeegee the layup from the lowest point up to the level of the top of the lip - this is the only part that will be bonded to the front bulkhead. Remove the other piece of cling film and insert your temporary packing piece between the front of the tank lip and the front bulkhead. Fold down the cloth from the bulkhead to lie along the top of the lip and squeegee out.

Apply flox at the intersection of the cloth and the front bulkhead. Take your second piece of cloth, fold it in half lengthways with the cling film in the centre, and position it on the tank lip to overlap the first layup. Unfold the cloth so that it laps onto the front bulkhead. Remove the cling film and squeegee out. Apply peel ply at the edges.

There will probably be enough cloth left from the layups to be able to proceed with layup 2 in the manual. Use 12mm spacers to force the rear bulkhead back and perform the layup in accordance with the manual.

Remove the 12mm spacers and insert the fuel tank spacers between the front bulkhead and tank face. Check that you have a clear path for the spars still then go and have a cup of coffee.

When the first two layups have set proceed with the third layup in accordance with the manual.

In all the three layups took me under two hours to complete.

April 26th Inserted the cockpit module into place in the fuselage and clecoed it down using the previous holes. I found that the holes no longer matched at the rear bulkhead due to the slight change in shape forced by the tank. All of the other cleco holes matched however. I cut out temporary holes for the wing controls as can be seen in the picture to the left.

One potential problem that can occur later on in the build is if the aileron controls don't align with the the wings. The wing incidence will be set at 2.5 degrees to the fuselage and the onboard controls should match this if both sets of thrust plates are to rotate in the same plane. I set the fuselage up so that it was horizontal in laterally and longitudinally then, holding my breath. measured the angle of the aileron thrust plate in relationship to the aircraft. Any more than a slight offset from ideal would require additional work on the cockpit module aileron support brackets. BIG SMILE. The aileron plates are set at exactly 2.5 degrees in relation to the aircraft. All of that patient work a few months ago to ensure that the spars and controls were exactly in line with the seat back has paid off and I have a perfectly aligned internal control system.

I checked that I had complete freedom of movement in the controls then removed the cockpit module. I scuff sanded the cockpit module and fuselage where the two would be glued together.

After dinner I started on my quality control checks. I have a check sheet for every nut and bolt sequence on the aircraft. These sheets, created from the manual diagrams, detail the exact sequence of nut, washer and bolt allowing me to verify that I have everything in place. Once the sequence is verified and signed off on the sheet the nut is marked with a blob of nail vanish to indicate that that nut may not be removed without repeating the quality control check. This phase is well worth the effort as I did find one washer missing off one of the mounting plate bolts in the cockpit module.

April 27th Continued with the quality control checks on the cockpit module.

April 28th - 30th No building, working in Wollongong, Australia

Well, it's two years since the kit arrived. Has it been worth it? A resounding yes to that. Am I still enjoying it? Also a yes to that. I can't actually believe that it has been two years as it certainly doesn't feel like I have been working on the aircraft that long. Other than the occasional problem I think the kit is living up to its specification. The build has been challenging at times but nothing that a bit of thought (and some cursing) won't fix. The only downside is the knowledge that if I bought a Europa XS kit today it would be airborne well before I get #272 airborne. This is primarily due to the fact that the XS has its wings already filled and primed while I have yet to do all of that work.