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Last Modified June 2nd 1998
May 1st - 2nd No building, still in Wollongong.
May 3rd Cut out the slots in the firewall that will later on be used for the rudder pedal rodding. Finished off the quality control check on the cockpit module. Prepared some of the metalwork that will be used on my brake lock. Tidied up the paintwork on the cockpit module control system where the paint had been scratched during the construction process.
May 4th - 5th No building. It's school science project time, or for those who don't have children, time for fathers to put their thinking caps on and design something scientific looking that your child can make out of things found around the house! This year we are into girder stress analysis.
May 6th Cloth cutting for all of the reinforcing that will be used to tie the cockpit module into the fuselage.
May 7th No building, in Wellington
May 8th I had hoped that my technical counsellor would come round today so that I could get on with my bonding but no such luck. As there are quite a few moving bits on the cockpit module that will never be seen again I decided to have Alistair check them before they get hidden from sight.
May 9th, 10th Made a housing to cover the fuel sender. To do this I simply shaped a block of foam so that the outside face matched the desired shape and then covered it with three layers of bid. When it had set I cut the edges to shape and used filler to clean up the surface. I also set in place the trim tab drive arm. This arm gets bedded in place in flox with the final positioning being set by a small wooden jig.
May 11th -13th No building. I did get some time to work on the microcomputer system that I am going to use to control the baking of my fibreglass parts. This small micro, based on a BASIC Stamp, will ramp up, monitor and then ramp down the bake process to ensure that distortion is kept to a minimum during the bake.
May 14th Alistair came round, checked out the cockpit module and gave it the big thumbs up.
May 15th Set up the fuselage base for the bonding process, cleaned all of the bonding surfaces with acetone and made sure I have everything ready.
May 16th Sticky
stuff day. John Caukwell arrived at 9:30 to help me with this job
which definitely needs a couple of people. The bonding process
began with coating all of the mating surfaces on the cockpit
module with raw Redux adhesive. This was done to ensure a clean
bond between the surfaces. The next task was to place Redux and
flox mixture along all of the bonding lines in the fuselage. This
is a messy job. We used quite a bit of Redux here but we
felt that any excess would be wiped away once the two parts were
mated and we didn't want to miss anywhere. Grabbing the cockpit
module as best we could, it was turned over and manhandled over
the fuselage. Pushing it as far forward as we could the module
was positioned in the fuselage. To ensure that the position was
correct, all of the pre alignment holes drill many months ago
were aligned with 1/8" nuts and bolts and drawn together.
There were a couple of locations where the surfaces wouldn't meet
without distorting the outer surface so we left those as gaps.
The next step was to apply pop rivets every couple of inches
along the join lines. I use 1/8" rivets with fairly long
heads and these very neatly held the surfaces together and didn't
distort the outer surface when riveted from the inside. All told
we used 180 pop rivets and 10 nuts and bolts to hold everything
together. We finished the job at 1pm by cleaning up the surfaces
with acetone by which time the Redux was really starting to
harden.
Several hours later I started the backfilling process. Every air void in the Redux greater than 3mm in diameter needs to be filled so this can be a time consuming job. I shone a lamp from the underside of the aircraft to highlight the holes then drilled into the cockpit module. Redux and flox was squeezed into the holes with a plastic syringe and the surface cleaned up with acetone. All told the amount of redux and flox used was perhaps a bit more than I would have expected in that just over a whole tin of Redux was used which means that 1.4kg was added to the plane. There is a fair amount sitting in the wheel well area which will be cut out later and there certainly was some left over in the containers after the excess was scraped off the plane so I suspect that the overall weight of Redux used was around 1kg (2.2lb). There are a couple of locations needing a bit of filling but I will now wait until I mix some more Redux up for another job before doing those.
On checking the outer surface of the aircraft I note that we distorted a small section just forward of the spar location on the starboard side. This won't be an issue however as it is under the wing root and can also be easy filled at surface preparation time.
May 17th I
continued with filling the second side of the aircraft before
moving back to the first side to drill out the rivets. I drilled
while Stefan, my oldest son followed on behind with an automatic
centre punch which does a great (and somewhat spectacular) job of
driving the rivet shafts out of the foam. With all of the rivets
and nuts out of the aircraft I cut out the port side spar hole
and fitted my dummy spar. I checked my wing alignment and again
was pleased to see that the wings are set to the fuselage at
exactly 2.5 degrees. Can't get much better than perfectly
aligned!
The change in structural strength is quite amazing. Gone are the two flexible pieces of fibre glass and in its place is a very solid aircraft base. My parents came round for the afternoon and my mother made the very telling statement that it actually looked like an aircraft for the first time. A very satisfying weekend's work.
May 18th Continued to remove the nuts and bolts from the fuselage and cut out the starboard spar hole. A tip for those following, if you use bolts then use ones with cross heads. They are much easier to drill out than slotted head bolts!
May 19th No building, Canberra for the day. This trip is only made by people who have rocks in their heads! Up at 5:00, Airport by 6:15. Airborne 7:00. Three and a half hour flight to Sydney, gain two hours. Arrive 8:35 . Airborne 10:10. Fifty minute flight to Canberra. Arrive 11:00. Meetings. Canberra Airport at 15:00. Airborne 15:30. Fifty minute flight to Sydney. Arrive 16:20. Airborne 18:00. Three hour flight to Auckland, lose two hours. Land 23:10. Bed at 00:00.
May 20th No building, too tired!
May 21st Started construction of a fuselage frame. Bob Berube at Europa Lakeland kindly supplied a diagram for this. Pity I didn't have a copy before bonding in the module as the jig would have ensured that both mouldings mated perfectly due to the fact that the fuselage is suspended from bolts rather than being held up from the base.
May 22nd No building
May 23rd
Continued the construction of the fuselage frame. I used 2 x 4 timber throughout the construction with all of the joints being held together with screws and building construction plates. The fuselage is held in place in the frame with four 1/4" bolts with large surface washers on the inside of the fuselage. The frame is now in its home in the workshop sitting on blocks and shims to keep the wheels off the ground and to set the fuselage up so that it is level. You should have seen the neighbour's faces when we rolled the empty frame up the street to the petrol station because the tyres needed some air!
May 24th No building as it is Air Training Corps sports day. Stefan's unit, Number 4 Squadron, won.
May 25th The shipment containing the new tailwheel, bulkhead modification kit and stage 4 arrived. Unfortunately the box was damaged in shipment and the lower engine cowling, bulkhead and an oil pipe have been damaged. An insurance claim has been made and no doubt, sometime in the next three months, I will see their replacements arrive. I unpacked all of the items and checked off the parts list.
May 26th Did the reinforcing layups on the cockpit module. Several strips of bid need to be added to bond sections of the cockpit module to the body. The only ones that requires a modicum of skill are the ones bonding the wing bracket to the outside skin and even these are simple. I laid up the bid cloth on the bench as normal between two sheets of cling film then cut the bid strips out of the cloth. This is much simpler than cutting long thin strips and certainly helps you retain your sanity. I suspect that I am going to end up with a few bubbles on these layups as the cloth has to go around several 90 degree bends and bid doesn't like doing that. I made the first of the four seat pan foam fillers. After a few attempts at cutting foam blocks to match the shape to be filled I came to the conclusion that it was a lot easier to fill the area with several smaller blocks. I used blocks 19cm long and shaped each block to suit the module shape. This way if I messed the block shape up I only had to throw that piece away and reduced the frustration level to zero.
May 27th A quick look at the layups on arrival back from Wellington showed most of them to be fine but a couple did have very thin bubbles running along the 90 degree bends. I will fill these with resin next time I have some made up.
May 28th No building, SAA meeting.
May 29th, 30th No building, working in Sydney.
May 31st Having clearly established that the fuselage was level longitudinally and laterally I established the position of the rear bulkhead. This sits 38mm aft of the tailplane torque tube centre line and supports the trim servo and original tailwheel. With the position set up I tacked it into place with 5 minute epoxy and then got the cloth ready for the layups. A six ply layup is applied either side of the lower section and this proved to be quite an interesting task as six plies don't like going around compound curves. The other layups of two plies weren't much easier either as they have to go around some very interesting bends.
From Rochdale to Ocho Rios
From Ocho Rios to Dorking
From Dorking its back to Rochdale
Oh where are we now
Asleep in a stream of sunlight
Awake in a dream at midnight
I'm rushing to wait for jumbo
Oh where am I now
You spend half your life in transit
But that's just the way God plans it
Pack a shirt and some fresh pajamas
That's all you need
"From Rochdale to Ocho Rios" 10cc 1978
