Brake System Bled

I bought an 1/8" NPT brass fitting with a barbed end for a hose to connect to the top of the brake reservoir. This allowed me to hook up the vacuum pump and suck up the brake fluid from the caliper level.


In the next picture you can see how the fluid is slowly moving through the left brake lines.


The part in this task I didn't and still don't understand is that the bubbles in the line never stopped coming. I think the brake valves leak a bit of air when they are open to allow the fluid to pass. Amazingly these bubbles disappeared almost instantly when I removed the vacuum. When that happened the fluid in the reservoir rushed into the lines heading down to the calipers and pushed every air in the way out.



As you can see there are no bubbles anymore. I also checked the lines in the tunnel and the bubbles there were gone too. The brakes work and I will see later when taxiing if the brakes work good enough or if I have to redo the bleeding process, somehow avoiding the air leakage at the valves.
If anybody reading this knows how to do this better, please let me know!

This task finished section 35. The most important news is that I don't seem to have a bad leak. Tomorrow or in the next days we will see if they seep or not.

Note:
The bubbles didn't show in the lines but there was actually a lot of air in the system. Pumping the brakes showed the cylinders were full of it and when I later bled the brakes again from the bottom, it revealed that a lot of air was also in the lower lines and the calipers. The vacuum method does not work and the bottom bleeding with a little oil pump is the way to go!

OAT problems - part 2

Guys, I am getting frustrated. I received the replacement connector from Dynon today.


There it was! The piece that was supposed to fix all my OAT problems. I crawled back into the tailcone and crimped it on. Measured everything through from the Molex pins and got 6170 Ohms for a very hot 97 degrees - in the shade, not in the tailcone, where it felt like 120 degrees F.
I plugged it in and started the SkyView with great anticipation but to no avail. All I got was "---". I reached back in the tail and lightly pressed down on the connector to see if the reading would appear but no such luck. From this connector I get absolutely no reading at all.
I pulled out the old one and removed some of the insulation from the leads and pulled out the whole yellow wire when I did. A bad crimp, obviously. I continued to solder on a 10 kOhms resistor, plugged that in the ADAHRS and got a steady 25 degrees C reading when lightly pushing down on the plug.


So the ADAHRS is not the problem, the connection is.

I wrote back to Dynon but I sure have lost any faith in their quality control. I just dealt with a broken servo that messed up my complete avionics system and would have rendered me without any avionics if it had happened in the air. Also, they sent me a replacement servo which was a unit that was used and had failed before for which it was "remanufactured". And that was supposed to be a valid replacement for a brand new unused servo that had done nothing so far than being installed in a fuselage? The remanufactured unit was older than my servo that had failed. What are they going to do about the ADAHRS now? Will they again suggest to send me a remanufactured piece of used junk in exchange for a brand new unit that I have just paid an outrageous amount of money for?

So, far I am not impressed - not impressed at all. If I could I would probably opt for a 6-pack at this point and forget about glass.

On a positive note, I checked the canopy skirt and noticed that my resin injection had done a nice job of fixing the delamination. Now I have to find out if it fits ok and do the fine trimming.

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.

Prepped for Stabilator Installation

In the morning - pretty late as I worked until midnight - I crawled back into the tailcone to measure the OAT resistance from the Molex connector end. Same result The OAT probe and the wires are fine. Here's a picture of the PFD with the problem showing itself ("OAT ---" in the lower right hand corner above "(HDG)").


After another trip into the tailcone with the same results, I tried to wiggle the plug a bit while it was plugged in and watch the PFD. Sure enough, when I was pushing down the plug, canting the pins a bit the OAT immediately got a reading of 34C which is close to the 94F I was measuring with conventional thermometer.
I contacted Dynon Tech Support and they are shipping me a new assembled connector with wire ends ready to crimp to the installed cable. I hope this resolves the issue. They say they never had to replace the male plug installed in the ADAHRS - yet.
So then I pulled the aft parts of the elevator cables ithrough the tailcone. Everything went well on that part,


I marked the threaded ends so I wouldn't confuse them while routing them through the fuselage part.


Connecting those dreaded turnbuckles turned out to be a major part though. Whatever I tried I could not connect the cables as the plans stated. They explicitly asked for the grooved side of the turnbuckle to point to the friont of the aircraft. The text is clear and so are the figures depicting the groove on the short side of the cable. The page 32-14 is revisioned and so I believe it to be true. However, the turnbuckle only goes in with the groove on the aft side. That's true for both cables and so I don't believe this is a coincidence. I searched VAF after this episode and it is confirmed that everyone had the same issue. I emailed Van's pretending I didn't check the forum and will see what they say.


Here you see one cable connected with the grooved side pointing aft.


The other cable is not long enough to connect it yet, so I tried the turnbuckle on each side separately. In the picutre you see it connected to the short F-1247A cable and the groove is pointing away from it.


In order to finish the rigging, I need to connect the stabilator and connect the cables to it. So I prepared the installation by setting up a rest for stabilator to sit on while will be fiddling the bolts and the WASHERS in.


As you can see the bolts are pretty well aligned with the bearings they are supposed to go through. This should be helping a bit and might even be able to connect it myself this way.


Tomorrow morning (after another work shift till midnight) I'll go to ground school and see if I can pass my BFR. I might try to connect the stabilator then as I don't know what else to do at this point. I need the rigging done in order to continue, so I better get this out of the way.
I haven't yet decided what to do about the wing electrical connectors. The old system was and is a joke, but I don't know if the new one is really much better. It certainly is work and it doesn't improve my idea of putting in trailer connectors with some slack to connect and disconnect them when putting the wings on and off. I am pretty sure I don't want to run an extra wire for the nav lights alone. It's extra weight and I have never ever used the lights without the strobe on my other plane. I don't think it's worth the effort and if I change my mind I can always add it at the first annual.
Things beyond the rigging? Trimming the canopy!

Antennas Installed

In the morning I went flying with H.L. to find out if I still have it. I probably do as I am alive to talk about it. The plane is a Eurofox which is pretty close to an RV-12 flight characteristics. Very light stick forces, very response, Rotax engine and almost no drag to slow it down.
I still have to put some ground school in to get my BFR signed off but the flying went well.

When I came back I tried to analyze the OAT problem. I figured I might have messed something up during the installation yesterday with all the soldering. Turned out that's unlikely as I measure a 7120 Ohms @ 92F between the sole two wires that connect it to the ADAHRS. No short, no broken wires. I have to admit that I am getting a bit uncomfortable about this whole glass cockpit stuff. And annoyed too, that I have so many issues with.
I am talking to Dynon Tech Support and they confirm that the resistance I am measuring is about right for the temperature. I measured at the splice connectors, so theres still the chance that one side of the splice crimp is bad. I'll crawl back in there tomorrow morning and measure at the Molex.


This was my setup for the tail cone access. A plywood board and a rag as cushioning. It worked ok and nothing got bent.

After the OAT check I retrieved the rudder attach plates from priming and installed them on the rudder pedal horns.


The VHF antenna was next on the installation list. I had some trouble attaching the coax cable as it wanted to bend in a way that would have chaffed on the elevator cable. I ended up zip-tying it to the main wire bundle to hold it down. The actual antenna installation was easy as I had installed the optional nutplates and didn't have to mess with the nuts in hard to reach places.


The transponder antenna installation concluded Section 42C and the avionics installation as a whole. However, I still have the task open which requires me to register the ELT. As I don't have a tail number, I assume this will get done after certification


I'll be running the Stabilator cables to the aft end tomorrow morning. I want to hold off on the installation of the elevator until I have Elizabeth to help me with it though. Not sure what else to do until then. The canopy needs trimming work done but that also requires two people...

OAT Installed

I drilled the rudder attach plates when I came home. The distance of the hole positions is 1" and this is fine according to the plans.


They looked a little banged up after drilling and trimming so I primed them again. The primer was still drying when I wrote this so tomorrow I'll add a photo of the finished parts.
I moved on to the OAT installation. This turred out to be a bit more time consuming than I had hoped for because I chose to not install when routing the wires as I wanted to keep the plane on the left side. The left side is also where the OAT would have pocked out so I decided to determine later how to install it.
Drilling the hole was the easy part.


The electrical diagram showed a simple two wire connection so I hoped for an easy installation in form of cutting two wires, install the probe and then solder the wires back together. It turned out that the cable was composed of 3 conductors and one shield.


I cut those wires, installed the probe and soldered the wires back together, reinstalled the shield with aluminum foil and isolated everything.




Everything looked good but when I powered up the SkyView I did not see any temperature readings. As a matter of fact I couldn't remember if I've ever seen any readings. I wanted to check on some older pictures I had taken during the Avionics problems but it turned out that I never took a picture of the primary flight display. So I cannot say if the probe had worked before my installation or not. It was getting late so I deferred further investigations to another day.
I will have to unplug the OAT from the ADAHRS and see if there's either a short or an infinite resistance. Anything else should provide some form of temperature reading. I saw that only the blue and yellow wires are used, so I should be able to trace the problem down if it's in the wiring.

UPDATE: I crawled in the back and measured the resistance between the blue and yellow wires. It looked good, the meter showed 7.12 kOhms and I believe that is a reasonable value. Anything between infinite and close to zero should be fine. Why the ADAHRS is not reporting temperatures, I will have to find out. Maybe reading the manual could help, maybe the Dynon forum has something about it.