Fuselage (More Cabin)

 

22Dec 2005 Did a fair amount of work on the roll-over structure. Drilled the upper and lower straps and everything seems to be going OK. It's not the easiest piece to deal with and getting it clamped down is the trick. I do love being close to the Boeing surplus store. I picked up some really cool, well used clamps for about a buck each. These worked out really well.

One thing I really like about the new Seattle location is the Boeing Surplus store. It's really convenient that it's located just down the street from Harbor Freight. The drill press clamps came from HF Aircraft supply and do a great job in holding the frame down to the bench. In the shot below, the four clamps worked awesome for this. These came from Boeing Surplus (yup, they're BS) for about $1/ per clamp. I need to go back for some more.


23 Dec 2005 Continued to drill the straps to for the roll-over structure. So far this seems to be coming along OK and I'd really like to get this somewhat finished by the end of the holidays. I think the plan is to finish up the fitting of the cabin roll-over frame, then finish the stuff in the cockpit like the fuel selector, fuel pump, vent lines, etc.
28 Dec 2005 Over the last couple days, I worked the fuselage fittings for the cabin frame. Generally these went together fine with little problems.




31 Dec 2006 Continued more work on the frame today by counter-sinking all the rivet holes. The only thing left before paint is some deburring of the frame internal straps.

 

 

 

The frame brace was pretty easy to figure out but the .125 angle was a real bear to get to the 101-degree angle. I was using my 6" vice and a bigger vice would have been nice. Then the realization hit me. Van's put out a SB a while ago which directed a revision in the way the channel attaches to the baggage area bulkhead. Since my kit shipped prior to the SB, I've requested a re-fit kit.

 

 

This is just sitting on the fuse at this time. I haven't drilled the attach brackets to the fuselage yet and am waiting on the upper channel retro-fit kit. This nice thing is that it appears to be just the right width which is a relief. While waiting on the kit and decent weather to prime, I think I'll work some of the other stuff that needs work in the cabin.








8 Jan 2006 I managed to get a pretty decent amount of time in the shop today and got a lot done. The flange on the fuel selector bracket was cut off since I have electric trim. If you cut just prior to the bend radius, there's a big gap between the plate and the selector valve cover. Since I'm using the Andair selector, I flipped the plate over and cur the plate about half way through the bend. This allows a nice lip on the mountain plate which covers the gap. I also cut the required chunks from the center floor cover.

 

 

 

OK, lousy picture but it did go together well with a little bit of the bend remaining to cover the gap between the mount plate and the cover.

 

 

Here's most of the covers in place and cleco'd in postiion. Everything is drilled and in need of final de-burring and priming. This seemed to go together a lot easier than I anticipated.

 

 

Here we are with the AFP high-pressure fuel pump/ filter. As you might be able to tell from the picture, the T-fitting just above the pump is at an angle about 15 degrees from the 90-degrees it should be. Per the plans, this should be at a right angle to the pump manifold, allowing the pump manifold to be positioned vertically. This ain't the case. A couple years down the road from Dan's encounter and this is still not fixed by the vendor.

 

 

In this pic I tweaked the fitting a bit so this whole thing works as it should. It really took a lot of effort to align the fitting. I don't think there's any way this has loosed up that much. Now on to making tubes.
12 Jan 2006 Making some decent progress on the fuel pump asembly and for some silly, twisted reason, I kind of like doing the tube work. I guess it's just a change from the normal metal work.




14 Jan 2006  

The supply lines to the selector are now done and I decided to do these in two parts since once in, you can't take them out. I'll put a union outboard. Note the Andair selector doesn't make you swap sides when hooking up to the selector. Left is left, and right is right. On the lower left is the supply line to the engine, but it's cut short for the fuel flow transducer, which I haven't bought yet.

 

 

Chucked up the vent fitting in the drill press and took off the threads. Seemed to have come out fairly well.

 

 



What I thought was going to be an easy task turned into a long endurance effort. This line was a pain in the rear to get put in but I finally got it somewhere close.
21 Jan 2006 Way more time required to do this than I thought. I had never really finished the rudder pedals so it was finally time. Started by suspending the pedal assembly and aligning the bottom of the pedals. This was all well and good, until I figured out the the rudder bars were swapped. The make sure the correct bar is forward as this will impact the geometry of the master brake cylinders.
  After getting everything aligned and drilled, the brake pedals got disassembled and de-burred, then riveted back together. This was something I thought over. Prime or not to prime? That's the question. I intend to powder coat the pedals so they are going to sealed and baked, thus no corrosion from moisture. It was just much easier to do this now and then powder coat later.
  Here we are temp fitted in the fuselage again. I think the last time I did this it was upside down. Anyway, I'm not planning on using the plastic hose that came with the kit. Aeroquip 666 is going to do the trick I think. It's a small teflon, stainless braded hose that should look great and have no maintenance issues. After I get the hose lengths, I'm trying to figure out what's next. Might be the tail and elevator rigging, but we'll have to see...
28 Jan 2006 The plan was to do a temp install of the brake lines so I can determine proper lengths for new hoses. I don't want to go the plastic tube route and will have Aeroquip 666 hoses fabricated. As it is and from what I can tell, here's the hose lengths with the rudder bar at the middle of the fore/aft range (these are fitting face to fitting face, not middle of the B-nut):

1) #1 MC (pressure) to Firewall: 24.75" (note this is about 3.5 shorter than the hoses supplied by Vans)
2) #2 MC (pressure) to Firewall: 24.75"
3) #3 MC (pressure) to #1 MC (supply): 35"
4) #4 MC (pressure) to #2 MC (supply): 35"
5) Res to #3 MC (supply): 14.625" (with a 90 on the top end)
6) Res to #4 MC (supply): 14.875"
  When you get most of the cabin pretty much fitted, you just have to spend the couple minutes to fit the forward upper cabin structure. Way too cool and a big visual progress step.
  I'd procrastinated in fitting the baffle to the forward cover so I did that then fitted everything in place. I'm trying to get everything I can at least fitted and drilled. The NW winter isn't too conducive to priming at this time of year.
  Well hey, if you've gotten it this far, grab some foam and cut up some quick seats! A trip to Joanne's Fabric and 30 minutes and we had some instant seats. I did want to test the rudder pedal placement to make sure it wasn't too far aft or forward.
  And then the boy came in. "Sit there" pointing to the airplane, he said. "In there?" I asked. So the boy got to be the first one to sit in the airplane and didn't want to get out. I asked who he was and he said "the Pilot!". This airplane thing is genetic!
  Van's finally sent the new cabin frame brace so I wanted to get the frame finished off. Didn't quite make it but did get the mounts temp fitted to the fuselage. I had a hard time figuring the fore/aft position, but from the drawings, it appeared to be .25" aft of the forward face of the 705 cross member.
30 Jan 2006 The 5-point seatbelts got here from the Rocket guys. Good price and delivery only took a couple weeks. Very cool. Now I can start nailing down interior colors.
5 Feb 2006 This was the birthday weekend so the wife and I got away for a while. It was also Super Bowl weekend, so I really didn't get too much done this weekend. I was able to work some of the hat angle for the sub panel and the stiffener for the instrument panel. I ended up cutting a 15-degree and 30 degree template to use on the holes prior to cutting. For a simple little angle, these take a some time.
  Also managed to get this sub-panel rib into place. Not a big deal though.
7 Feb 2006 I received my brake lines from Heber Aircraft in El Segundo, CA. Seemed to be a bit on the expensive side but service was excellent and the quality is perfect. These are Aeroquip 666 -4D hoses with stainless fittings.
  Here's the shot from the top and you can note the 90-degree fitting on the left supply line. The trick is where to secure these lines. From the picture above, I think a couple adel clamps ( I REALLY hate these things) bolted to the center rudder support is going to do the job.
11 Feb 2006 Yup, a the point for lots of stick time!
12 Feb 2006 The boy's buddy Owen was over, and Alex being the instigator, wanted to play "pilot", and so did Owen. These two are a week apart in age and are going to be trouble.
  I'd been working the panel lay-out for some time now and finally have, for the most part, the finished layout. Trying to get an accurate print has really been a problem as it's always been a couple inches short in width and trying to get it right took some time. I finally downloaded a client from Kinko's which converts a CAD file to their format without losing dimensions, and then was submitted over the web to the local store. For $3.80, I had a nice perfect layout. Very cool indeed. Now we're making serious airplane noises. No really...just checking instrument and switch placement. Looks good to me. Time to submit for cutting.
16 Feb 2006 Well this is a fairly cruddy picture but I was trying out the new phone. It's OK, but my old Olympus still does a pretty good job. I finished fitting the hat angle to the sub panel section as well as drilling the stub ribs to the center sub panel. Problem was, I didn't get them lined up flush along the upper surface so it was another order with Vans. The part was only $3.60 so no big deal.
  This was really a PITA. This skin is very tight and difficult to get fitted on the left and right sides. The center seemed to line up OK with the sib-panel and ribs, but the sides did not go well. It's been on and off several times and I've even tried heating a bit. Overall, it was about .125 off at the forward lower corners. Vans's tech support suggested clamping the firewall between a couple blocks of wood and tapping the flange down a bit. I tried this and it seemed to work a little. I finally was able to start drilling the holes in this. Everyone seems to have a problem here, why not make an adjustment on the CAD file during manufacturing...?
25 Feb 2006 After a lot of colorful commentary I finally succeeded in drilling the forward top skin. This darn thing is really tight and all it takes is about .125 additional spacing for this to fir right. Everyone has this problem so it's not just me!
  Had to re-make the stub ribs after getting the spare parts from Van's. Another $3.50 added to the kit price.
  My radio stack is generally too long to fit behind the panel, like that's a surprise. The only component that does fit is the audio panel but a lot of good that does without the rest of the stuff. Sooooo, Cut the hole in the sub panel; again like everyone else. Doesn't Vans just cut this thing at the factory.
26 Feb 2006 The last in the rant que is the left panel rib. Again, just like the rest of the free world, this rib gets cut off, then moved outboard a couple inches to make way for the GRT in front of the pilot seat. This rib is almost dead center in front of the pilot so anything you put there is going to have to move. Since I'm trying to determine wire lengths for harnesses, I needed to see where all the boxes fit. 4 sheets of poster board and a couple hours, and I have these nifty mock-ups of the avionics stack, #1 GRT, and the TruTrack autopilot. Worked out very nicely. Due to this fit check, I figured out that my top row of switches above the radio stack had to go, I moved the lower row of switches up a fuzz as well as the entire radio stack. The sub panel hole is slightly too small and I needed to move the left column of 2.25 " instruments about .15 outboard. I'm having the panel cut so these moves just saved me another panel. Very cool.
4 Mar 2006 We finally had a decent day but I was too wiped out to fly, so I took the occasion to prep the canopy roll-over structure for priming. This was the first priming session in the new place so I had to figure out the whole new routine. Not quite there yet, but I'm working on it. By the time I get this figured out, I'll be done priming. I'm not done yet, but I an see the end of the priming sessions. Very cool!
8 Mar 2006 I had read stories of guys who riveted the structure, then found that the riveting had pulled the sides in a bit. Others had had the structure warp a bit. Here's my way. I clamped the channel to the fuselage fittings with a straight board clamped across the forward face. this pretty much prevented any movement or creeping while riveting. I did the riveting to the forward channel, then took the part off the fuselage and put the aft channel parts in place and cleco'd. Take a pop rivet squeezer to it and in a couple hours you're done.
10 Mar 2006 I finished up the aft channels tonight and it looks fairly decent, at least the riveting does. I wish Vans would figure out a nicer way to attach this to the fuselage. As it is, it  just needs some cosmetic work.
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