Trimming the Canopy Skirt - part 1

Why was I so quiet yesterday? I was building a house for my truck so it would bake out in the sun while it is exiled from the carport.


This job took most of the day and working in the open sun didn't make it easier at all. After finishing this I just let it be good and enjoyed the afternoon cooling down in the pool.

Today, I was faced with yet another loss of internet access due to a low signal at the hook-up point. I have never experienced a worse cable service than with Comcast. However, I cannot switch as Cox and Comcast have conveniently divided the city up in half and they do not compete in my area. Sounds like a cartel? Sure, that's because it is one. No third provider would provide internet speeds that I could live with, so I am stuck with this horrible service at an outrageous fee.
So, while waiting for the cable guy to come buy (they could just open an office on my street to save them and me some time), I took the stabilator off again. Not just because I wasn't happy with the cables and the threaded ends in the turnbuckles but also because there wouldn't be a way to really work around the stabilator. It's just too big and I will store it for now until it will get reinstalled when the plane is at the hangar.

Then I started the much dreaded job of trimming the canopy. First I had to cut out the trimming template and apply it to the canopy "horns".


Marking the outline of the template presented a challenge as I had chosen to dye the fiberglass black and none of the Sharpie's would leave a good mark for trimming. Fortunately, my wife loves scrap-booking and she had a silver pen that worked great on black. I was a bit conservative when marking the outline. First I followed the template, then when it was removed I added about a 1/4" in the front as a small deviation in the back where the clecos were, could create quite some offset in the front. I didn't want to be cutting off too much before fitting it.



The center section was first traced with electric tape and then also marked along the edge with the silver pen. The tape made it easier to correct the alignment as well as providing a nice straight edge.


I did a rough cut with a 6" cutting wheel, yeah, the thing that cuts through steel. That worked pretty well, you just have to be very careful and get a good grip on the thing.


The rough cut was followed by a finer one using the high speed angle die grinder. That tool sucks more air than the compressor can provide so I had to give the pump some rest once in a while to cool off.



Remember how I had a problem with some duct tape getting baked on the layup in the center section? Well I removed that today too by using the straight die grinder with a hard Scotchbrite wheel. It was pretty easy actually. Sorry, no photo of that one.
I also noticed another problem I had created myself when running out of time doing the center layup in the open sun. The lower layer had already set up and didn't connect too well to the new layup so I found delamination along the edge in some spots. I injected some fresh resin with a syringe and a thin needle (I bought this stuff for filling the rivet holes in the pop rivet heads) and clamped the leading edge together until it would cure.


The cable guy showed up during the trimming and figured out that the hook-up point signal level dropped quite a few decibels since the last time and that the signal was way below norm anyway. He requested that the amp in the service station for my area would crank up the power. He also replaced some low quality fittings as he called it and the signal came back up to levels the modem could work with until the amp would help to bring it up even further.
Let's see how long that will last. The last time a cable guy was working on my signal levels was just 14 days ago...

It was too late in the day to do the fine trimming and I have to see when Elizabeth has time to help me putting on the canopy. I want to put it on at least once this week so I know how much more trimming I have to do. I might just have to fill the brake system with fluid now as there's not much more I can get busy with during the week.

Stabilator Installed

In the morning I passed my ground part of the BFR, the flying part had already happened and so I'm current again.
Back home I got to work on the stabilator. With the sawhorses and some additional stuff to prop it up enough and a bit of patience the stabilator came on pretty easy.



Some noise next to the driveway caught my attention.


A baby quail following the rest of the crowd and Mommy- I must have disturbed them. The eggs it passed were quail eggs that didn't hatch.
Back to work. Connecting the cables to the horns was actually easy despite the washers that had to get squeezed next to the horn and in between the forks.



Then I took somewhat more than half an hour to put the large cover in place that holds the bulkhead in place when the cables get tensioned. There are really a lot of screws going into this thing!


Now the second turnbuckle went on both sides of the cable ends easily. I tightened them by feel and checked both cables with the tensiometer. It's the blue scale that applies here and the reading is at the 6 o'clock position. Right on 40 lbs. I should mentions here that Van's got back to me about the groove problem. Reality is right and the plans are wrong. They said "they had not gotten around to correct the plans yet" and provided me with a link to VAF where the grooves were discussed before. So is VAF now the official Van's Tech Support forum?


However, taking a close look at the cables and their routes through the belly, I was not happy. Not happy at all! It seems that the further to the front the more the cables want to chafe, at the edges of the holes they are supposed to pass. The upper one is particularly bad and is indeed touch with quite some force and the very front hole. There's no way of adjust anything in that respect so I am a bit at a loss here.



Also, all the cable ends are outside of the turnbuckles more than the three threads Van's was asking for. If I would screw them in deeper, the tension could easily be double the requested amount.



The elevator feel on the stick is nice though. No feeling of sawing the bulkheads in half, no chafing noise or anything. I will ask Van's what they think about this but I sure won't get an answer before Monday. Also if someone here has a comment, please leave a message with your thoughts!
I will have to take the stabilator off again anyway as it is way too big to work around in the carport. The same is probably true for the rudder but only because the entrance is to low to allow the fuselage to get pushed back far enough to have enough room for the engine installation. And I do want to have the firewall inside the carport and not halfway outside in the sun.

A bit frustrated about the results, I resorted to stuff I can control. I riveted some nutplates on the tunnel cover that will hold the flap handle arrestor.


That at least turned out very nice.

Tomorrow I will take the stabilator off again and store it until it gets hauled to the hangar that I will rent starting next month. I believe I might build one of those temporary garages/sun-covers so I can get my truck out of the sun. If there's still time I will start the trim work on the canopy.

Ready For Some Priming

I worked into the dark tonight to finish the last pieces of aluminum that needed some scrubbing. Now I ready for the priming session. Tomorrow I am planning to shoot some green and depending on how I can arrange things in the paint booth, I might also shoot some white primer. The green is just for corrosion protection while the white primer is to covered with paint.
If I can't do the white I'll do that on Thursday to be sure it had enough drying time before getting painted on Saturday.
Sunday looks like a day for flying if the wind dies down ....


Here's the stack piling up and waiting for some spray action.

Storing the Stabilator

Storing the larger parts like the Stabilator is becoming an issue. Although I found a good solution for the Stabilator by placing it on some swings that are hanging from the covered patio, which proved to be reliable even in gusty weather, I was getting worried that the ever creative Southern Arizona insects or even birds could find the seemingly safe housing the inside of this structure would provide too inviting to resist moving in. So, in order to prevent these undocumented aliens to invade my Stabilator I decided to seal off the possible entry points.
I used a newspaper for the center section to allow a little bit of moisture transfer and I also added 5 packs of silica gel packs inside each side of the Stabilator to avoid condensation.
I hope this turns out to be a comprehensive solution to long term storage until I finish the fuselage and eventually need to mount this part on the rest of the airplane...

Mission Accomplished

I've accomplished the task of finishing the Stabilator over the weekend. Yay! 4th of July can begin now...
The final riveting of the splice plate and the aft skins went easy and without any incident. You might see that I broke the edge of the skins where they were supposed to get riveted. I was afraid that the force of the rivet would pull the skin up a bit, creating a sharp edge and a nasty look. The tool I have for that from Avery is not that easy to use. You have to take extra care to guide it cleanly along the edge as it tends to run into the skin which creates pretty ugly bends that are hard to fix. This will cause a few problems when I use this one on the tail cone skins, I can already see that.
The other quirk with it is that it is very hard to fine adjust as a little turn on the screw has a very large effect. Oh well, I'll just have to live with it I guess. But if you read this and haven't bought one yet, you might want to try the one from Cleveland Tools as it can't be worse than this one here.
The last steps were the assembly of the control horn and mounting the weights on the Counterbalance Arm. That went well, too although I nicked the powder coating in my vise a bit and so I gave it a little rattle can primer on these spots to keep the steel from rusting.
That was it! Final assembly is supposed to happen later and now I'm heading towards the tail cone.
55 hours went into the Stabilator. This sums up to 116.5 total so far.

Hinges Riveted and Some Prep Work Done

I thought there wasn't much to do until the Stabilator was done but I underestimated the time factor for the few steps ahead of me. It was amazing how much time it took to get them done. And so was the amount of rivets going into the rear flanges. It looks more like the skins are attaching the rivets than vice versa, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, the job was practically easy although lengthy, as I said before. Because of my resolution to prime the inside and all mating parts, I couldn't just rivet away and the blue tape on the pictures indicate some clecos that were not be removed as the splice plate had yet to be primed. So had the aft skins that also had to be partly match drilled with the ribs that were supposed to hold them.
When I clecoed these aft skins to the ribs to do the drilling I noticed that I had overlooked that the skins will be attached to the main skins of the Stabilator and thus will have a mating surfaces that I hadn't primed yet. Oh well, I was at prepping anyway and so I took care of that and sprayed a basically assembled part for the first time (can you see that I am still thinking about painting the plane before final assembly here?).
Priming concluded the day in the shop so it could dry and settle over the night.

Skins Are On

I've finished riveting the skins on. Everything worked fine but I've noticed about three places where the clecos have bent the skin when the weight of the Stabilator was pushing sideways on them. It doesn't look too bad and maybe I can fill this later when I'm preparing the surfaces for painting. I will have to be a bit more careful next time to avoid this in the future.
The good news is, that I also got my A/C unit installed and it works great! It cooled down the workshop from 102 to 82 within two hours and if you stand in the blast of the cool air while it is doing this, you can work along just fine. I am very happy I spent the money on this unit.
This weekend I won't be having a lot of shop time but I do hope to finish the Stabilator at least as there is not really a lot left to do. And then it will be on for the tail cone ...

One Side Down, One To Go...

Within two hours I finished riveting one side (two surfaces) of the Stabilator tonight. I hope I can get one more surface done tomorrow morning before work as working in the afternoon is just ridiculously hot in the shop. Maybe the A/C that is supposed to arrive tomorrow morning provides some relief.
Really nothing exciting at this part of the build but I find it very satisfying as riveting always marks an endpoint of a job (well) done.
While I was riveting my mind was wandering and I am thinking that maybe it might be a good filler for the time I am going to be waiting for the wing kit to think about the paint scheme. After all it appears to be silly to completely finishing the assembly of an airplane only to take it apart again to paint it and put it back together. Why not paint it now, before assembly, and then just leave like that? Sure, the paint might get nicked here and there, but that would happen also during use - the usual hangar rash. I have to think about this a bit further... it sure would fill that hole of maybe 7-8 weeks of waiting time that might be ahead of me.

Skins Are Coming On...

Did I say I wanted to build a bit slower the other day? I must have been hallucinating. Either that or it is just incredibly hard for me to slow down. It is just too much fun to let it sit. Sigh!
As I said before I wanted to just slide the skins on and see how they fit. I know, I should have done that before priming as any adjustments that required removing metal would have also caused to re-prime. Well, I was too confident and got lucky as the skins really just came on easy. The radii of the forward ribs fit perfectly and nothing was resisting the skins to bend smoothly around the leading edge.
So, I thought, why not just cleco them on and keep them in this position for now ... Well, you know how this will end, right?
You got it! I just kept on clecoing and then I thought, well this went smooth, maybe I should just turn the thing over and do the other side as well. And that's just what I did. The only mistake I made here was to not question the manuals direction enough that said cleco top and bottom of ONE skin first, then rivet both surfaces and THEN work on the other skin. I couldn't figure out why I should flip the Stabilator over and over when I can also do all that with only two turn overs and be done.
Well the reason escaped me at that point but while I was happily clecoing away it started to dawn on me that I just won't have enough clecos to finish the job. I think Van's suggested 350 copper clecos and that's just what I had. My guess is that it takes about 450-500 to fully cleco the Stabilator with both skins on both sides. That is if you follow the other direction that explicitly said in two locations, cleco every hole on both surfaces! I didn't want to screw up the skins by introducing any tension or twist, so I did just as directed. My Avery cleco tool was a life saver here!
No harm done though, so I had less to cleco and more time left. Any idea what I might have done next? Exactly! Well, so far so good I thought, maybe I should just do a few rivets as this is the part that I love anyway.
So I started the slow riveting process beginning on the leading edge and going aft one rivet at the time. I stopped at the spar and just took out every other cleco here to speed up the next riveting run. I don't think that doing this along the spar could introduce any tensions or twists.
But that job is something for during the week. I'm tired now and I didn't even take my time for dinner ...

Skins Washed

The wind this morning was not calm as forecast. It was rather gusty and the thermals built up quickly so it didn't look like a fun day for low Cross Country flying at all. Well, as long as there are still parts in the kit we always have an alternative, right?
So, I started the day by washing the roughness of the primer off skins. That went well and pretty fast. I put a photo in but I doubt you can see the difference, can you?
I think I might just go ahead and see how the skins fit on the skeleton later this afternoon ...

Skins Primed

The wind calmed down in the later afternoon enough to risk the priming. After two hours the work was done, including the cleanup. The reason why it took so long this time was that I had some trouble with my paint gun or rather the paint in it. The primer dries so quickly that it clogged the gun in between swapping the two skins on my painting table and then I had to remove the paint from the cup, spray wash the interior with MEK and then get the paint back in and clear out the rest of MEK with paint. That is really the only downside of this otherwise excellent primer. It just dries too quickly and tends to do that in the gun as well. But how can you blame Cortec? It was 108 degrees during my paint job.
In addition to the skins I also primed the back of the piano hinges as they are about to get riveted on the skin flanges. The outside of these flanges got primed too because of that.
I guess tomorrow will be more water splashing when I am washing the roughness off the inside of the skins. But I do hope for some fun in the form of flying my little RANS, too. Early in the morning I'll be heading out to the strip and see if I can discover a new airport - Gila Bend.

Prepping the Skins

In the early morning I rushed to the shop to get the work done and leave before the heat builds up. I finished the prep work from the previous evening which was to remove the vinyl on the last skin. Then I went to the VpCI-440 washing and scrubbing routine. The skins were really awkward to handle because of their size and washing off the 440 became a problem for the first time. I don't want to have the residues building up in my backyard and so I have a huge bin to collect the dirty water and dispose of it in the sewers. Only problem now is that the skin's dimension did not fit the bin. With the help of gravity I caught most of the wash-off though.
The skins are drying now and I am waiting for the wind to calm down before shooting the primer which I hope I can do later this afternoon.

Preparing for Priming the Skins

Friday evening went into a lot of prep work for what appears to be my usual weekend happening these days: prepping and priming aluminum. So, I match drilled the piano hinges that will attach the ASTs later. BTW: When you're done drilling these and look at them you have this feeling as if you really goofed up. That is because some the holes do not align and look awkward to the eye after drilling the formerly masked holes through the skin flange. Don't worry! I got spooked by that and clecoed them to the skins as they will get riveted to the flanges later and they match perfectly.
The rest of the evening was spent deburring the skins on the edges and the outside holes (these were slightly sharp where the punch exited) and finally removing the outside vinyl along the rivet lines and the complete vinyl covering on the inside of the skins. This would get me ready to start prepping them in the early - if time wouldn't have run out. I finished one skin and left the other for the following day.