Nose Wheel Fairing Completed

First I removed the masking tape from the electrical connector closeouts.

Then they went onto the fuselage.

Then I worked on incorporating the SB 12-08-09 (a reinforcement to the nose wheel fairing brackets) into the nose wheel brackets.

Then the front fairing was ready to get mounted onto the nose wheel.

The fit was good but the clearance to the tire was too small. With a minimum of 0.5" all around, I should be able to get my index finger in between and should have been able to get around without getting pinched. That was not the case, so I mounted the aft part as well to see if both parts needed further trimming (and for the looks).

It almost makes that nose leg looks tiny and thin, doesn't it?

All went off again, so I could give the tire enough clearance.

I now went to trim back to the second scribe line as you can see in the picture. That was not really enough either. I ended up widening the opening almost to the end of the splice strip before I was satisfied.

I also trimmed the openings for the tow bar. They needed quite some elongation on the aft side before there would not be any interference with the fairing while pushing or pulling on the tow bar.

That completed the work on the actual fairing. Next was the nose leg fairing which fit pretty well right away. It needed a bit of shortening on the top but nothing else. The way Van's wants me to connect it to the leg though I do not approve of. I will not be drilling into the nose leg just to attach the fairing.
For now I will restrict myself to trimming it to allow for enough clearance to the aft wheel fairing and then think about a good way of holding the leg fairing in place that does not involve drilling into the leg.

So I moved on to installing the POH tray under the instrument panel on the passenger side, a subset of section 43.

I was a bit tough to get at at this time and I should have definitely installed this before even riveting the instrument board in.

The tray allows the POH to stay secured yet making it easily accessible at any time. Van's really designed this very well.

Tomorrow, I hope to finish the trimming work on the nose leg fairing and after smoothening the skirt on the canopy, I consider the project completed - pending rigging work at the airport. Hopefully I can move the plane out to a hangar next weekend.

Fairing Brackets Drilled

I had forgotten to actually do the last step of the electrical wing connector installation which is to close up the fuselage side by screwing on the closeout covers. When I tried to do that tonight I realized that aluminum was touching unprimed aluminum and that this would probably be never opened up again.
I decided to remove the covers and prime their outside line that actually touches metal.

You can hardly see it in this picture but the center area is masked off. I will take another picture when I take off the masking tomorrow.

Next I installed the brackets on the nose wheel fairing. I do not like the CCR264 rivets and I was surprised Van's used them for attaching the brackets all along the flanges. They do not appear to be very strong.

I thought the next step was a waste of time but it turned out to be pretty relevant indeed. It was to connect the two halves while the drill template was screwed into place. Then the template was marked along the contact line with the brackets.

The reason why this is important is that it really makes a difference on the contact line with the template if or if not the aft fairing is installed. In my case the aft fairing pulled the brackets outboards and changed where the template would allow me to drill the holes.

I noticed this when I did it the first time, and took the aft fairing off, realizing that I could no longer see the marked line all along the edge of the template. The clamps did obviously not hold the template down tight enough. I did it again and this time I could hold the template in place and I could successfully drill the holes in the right places.

More on the weekend ...

Wing Connectors Completed

This is the big headline but the real work went into a good progress on the nose wheel fairing and that's how the day started with as well. I trimmed back the filled area on the left face of the forward fairing. It looks great and bonded well.

The rest fit just as well and the fairing was ready to get the last touch-ups on its finish. I had sanded down the filled area on the rear fairing and it needed another layer.

It turned out that I had caught some air in the filler and did not build it up thick enough.

While this stuff was curing I moved on to the wing connectors. The receptacles in the fuselage were already done but their counterparts in the wing roots needed to get replaced as well.

Unbagging the wing roots was the first step. The wings are sitting on my back patio and little critters would just build a nest in there if I left the lightening holes open.

The instructions are straight forward and please don't try to outsmart Van's and change the order on the steps for riveting in the backplates. You need to pull the rivets first before screwing in the studs or your riveter won't have enough room to pull straight.

Crimping on the connectors required some thinking again. I even checked my blog to see if I had mentioned what sizes on the crimping pliers I used but I could not find a hint. So, now, as I have figured it out again, let me put this in writing: On the HF crimping pliers, I used C for the wire connection and D for crimping the relief onto the insulation.

Be careful when you insert the connectors into the plug and even more careful when you screw the plug to the studs! Orientation does matter here!

It was a little easier on the left wing as there are less existing wires in the snap bushing.

Crimping was faster too but then I forgot to take a picture of the end result...

This was how far I got with the images before I bagged the roots back up for another 1 or 2 weeks when they will get moved to the airport.

In the meanwhile the filler on the fairing had cured enough to get handled again, so it was back to the fiberglass.
The next step was simple but time consuming - match-drilling the screw holes into the aft fairing half. The time consuming part was that I had to install screws and nuts after drilling each hole to keep the parts aligned.

Everything was taken apart again to cleco the brackets into place.

These brackets were match-drilled and taken off again, so they could get dimpled, scuffed and primed.

The splice strips were dimpled too and I also applied a marking on the strips so I could tell which part was covered by the forward fairing's fiberglass. The vinyl will have to get removed there so the aluminum could get scuffed up and later get epoxied to the fairing. I will use the upper vinyl part as masking tape to keep the epoxy away from parts it should not bond to.

I took all the clecos out and removed the strips for this upcoming treatment.

My hope is that I can finish the work on the nose fairing during the week. The upcoming epoxy step will require the thing to be left alone for curing for a night anyway and that would be best done during the week.
Then I should be able to complete the nose leg fairing over the next weekend and that would pretty much complete what I could hope to get done in the carport.

Tail Fairing and Wing Connectors

I got a bit sloppy with updating the blog but I did get some work done, despite not telling you until now.
I have to admit though that working outside with the high humidity and the usual high temperatures over 100F does make it very hard to maintain a good pace. A few hours feel like I spent all day outside.

So on Friday night, I took off the vertical stabilizer and rudder assembly to get better access to the rivet holes in the tail skins.

In order to secure the rudder cables I connected them with a piece of safety wire.

Now I could get at that rivet holes and I started riveting the nutplates onto the tail skins, to which the fairing halves will eventually connect to.
I used the manual squeezer for this delicate job as I wasn't sure if I could get a good flat seating done with the heavy pneumatic squeezer. The heavy weight reduces the tactile feedback and just provides no feel as to how flat the die sits before squeezing. The manual is much better at that.
The first run was quickly done.

And the second one was even quicker done.

Without the rudder assembly the plane looks like nothing that could fly soon. That's a bit disheartening but fortunately I know better.

That ended Friday night.

On Saturday morning, I decided to continue Section 40, the lighting installation. One of the open tasks was to install the HAL9000 simulation in the cockpit. For the not so cineastic ones among my readers, this describes a red-light camera eye. Well, Van's didn't provide a camera feature but it definitely qualifies as a red-light eye.
I almost didn't want to install it as the light it creates is so faint that you could hardly find your panel if you wouldn't know it's there in the dark. To stay more ELSA compliant, I decided to install it for now before considering getting something that could actually help to read a map if needed.

So I ran the wire pair through the rollbar. I actually ran a thin wire, starting on the top running it down, and then connected the pair to the guide wire with duct tape (cutting off the excess as the hole is pretty small). Then I pulled the pair with the guide wire through the rollbar and through the hole on the top. The bushing was pulled out but as it is a snap bushing it snapped right back in.

Had I read the instructions better I wouldn't have had to this task 3 times before being satisfied.
The part I missed was that they wanted me to not just run the wire pair though but also a 1/4 OD plastic tube to protect the wires from chafing. The other time I had to redo it was owed to me not caring about the routing of the wires below the rollbar plane. It is actually much more reasonable to route the wires BEHIND the ELT frame instead of in front of it.
Once I did it all correct, the back of the rollbar structure looked like this.

Finally I could install the actual light feature.

The riveting was quickly done and I also added some RTV on the back of it to hold the splice connectors in place. The clamp is actually doing this in the picture while the RTV is curing.

That concluded the activities on Saturday and today I was focusing on the electrical wing connectors, aka Section 31A.

I had never installed the flimsy connectors that Van's had come up with initially. I assembled them but decided that I would use trailer light connectors in lieu of a better connectivity solution.
Well, Van's came up with something better than that and after a lot of studying I decided to do the change to the new connectors. For now, I decided not to do a big wire retrofit of the wings, so I won't install separate wires for running the Nav lights without the strobes and I will also not install the sync wire to keep the strobes synchronized over a long period of time.
This is all extra weight and a lot of work at this stage but I do not see the necessity or even a real benefit. I might change my mind later when flying but I seriously doubt it.
I started by removing the old connector plates and marking which part of the connector has what reference number. Trust me, this gets confusing quickly as Van's did not do the installation as you might expect.

Then I installed the capacitor on the left side wiring. This ensures that you're not cutting off a spade connector that you actually needed. The plans do not do this in this order.

Then I cut off the spade connectors from the Stall Warning and the Ground wires and crimped on the new connectors onto the Ground, Stall Warning and the new Nav light wires.

Onto the right side. This was easier as there were no spade connectors that were still needed, so all the old connectors were replaced by new ones.

Then I inserted the connectors into the new plug for the right side.Watch out!
The plugs are different on each side. The right side wants the plug that has the thick plastic pins sticking out, whence it's called a male connector.

The same happened on the left side, only the plug is a female one which has the metal bushings that allow it to float.

Time for drilling the seat pan in the cockpit. Again, Van's provided a template that uses existing rivet heads to position it.

The HF angle drill is just a bit too deep for one of the 4 holes. I drilled 3 holes and clecoed in between. For the 4th hole I used my close quarter angle drill and I opened up all the holes to #19 with that drill as well.

I vacuumed the interior of the gills to remove the debris from the drilling (and a lot of dust from just sitting around) and then went on to prep the angles that would hold the connectors in place.
The top 4 holes that connect the angle to the seat pan needed tapping in 8-32.

The wires on the left side needed to get tamed with some cable ties and then the angle went on.

When installing those angles be careful again. Look at the connectors, they can be rotated and present a different connection pattern if you do. Each connector has a female and a male section on its face. The male section should always be below the female section. Here are the pictures, left side:

... and the right side:

The next steps will be to close up the openings on each side and to install a snap bushing on the left side where I will run the AOA tube through. Then I will work on the wing connectors.