Author Archives: Michael

Seat Heat Wiring

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Time: 2 Hours

Before I moved on to the wheels I wanted to finish one last electrical task and that was to run the power and ground wires for the pilot and passenger seat heat. Classic Aero Designs was nice to enough to send me the wiring harnesses for both seats including the switches so that I could pre-wire them prior to ordering my seats. If you remember I decided not to run the seat heat through the Vertical Power VP-X as the draw fluctuates too much and could cause issues. So I’m using a fuse block specifically for these two seats and that’s where I ran my red power lines from to the general area where the seats will be along with two black ground wires from my ground block.



I then had to tweet the hole for the pilot switch a little to get a good fit and installed the switch. The passenger switch will get installed later in the panel that will house the control stick and eyeball vent.

So I believe that I’m done running wires from the fuselage up through the gear towers to the instrument panel. That means I can now rivet the floors in whenever I want and rivet the top skin I place as well. I think I will hold off on those tasks for a while just to make sure, you never know!

Canopy Top Slider 

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Time: 4 Hours

The canopy frame will slide forward/backward on three slider rail. On on the top aft skin and two on either side of the cockpit running from the bulkhead where the passenger sits to the windscreen rollbar. I started on the aft top slider first per the plans. The slider will be two peices riveted together to make a lip for a part on the canopy frame it to slide onto. These two parts will have a bend in them at the forward and to drop into a receptacle. As a canopy slides forward the aft end will drop into this receptacle lowering the canopy onto the skin, and when you open the canopy the aft and will slide up and after on the rail lifting the canopy up and clear of the skin. First up is to match the angle of the receptacle on the lower part of the slider. 


Van’s lays out all the measurements for the rivets in the screws that will go lengthwise on this slider. There is a total of nine screws that will be used to hold the slider onto the top skin. There was a lot of drilling, deburring and countersinking for these two parts. You will notice that I had to countersink both the top and bottom of the slider. That’s because the bottom will sit flush on the top skin and the rivet heads could not protrude past flush. So when I squeeze the rivets the shop head with squeezed into the bottom countersink keeping it completely flush.

Once I had the slider completed I did some measurements on the top skin from for bulkhead to the after located to establish centerline. I’ve been matched up the centerline of the slider to those lines I drew on the top skin and taped the slider firmly into position.


I then used the screw holes in the slider to match drill the top skin placing a screw, washer and nut in as I drilled which meant climbing back into that tailcone!

From this point you would normally start working on the next two slider rails, unfortunately the attachment hardware for the canopy which is needed to align these two rails is back ordered by Van’s. So I will postpone the rest of the steps and move onto another task.

Fiberglass Tasks and Engine Mount

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Time: 4 Hours

The next little (relatively speaking because I hate fiberglass) task I want to finish up before getting too deep into the finish kit are the rudder bottom cap and the HS tips. The rudder bottom had one side filled but not sanded so that’s where I started today. 

I used various tools like the finish orbital sander and my new fine work sanding sticks I got from Cleaveland Tools at OshKosh. 

These tools allow me to get into the sharp corners and get a nice clean edge. 

I used them to get inside the HS tips as well. 

So once I finished that little bit of sanding, there will be tons more, I decided to venture into the finish kit. I decided to do the engine mount first since I had just taken the top skin off to work a little easier on a wire. With the skin back off I have good access to the firewall where the mounting bolts go. First up was to enlarge the holes I drilled way back when building up the firewall and forward area for the 3/8″ bolts. 



I used good drill bits and plenty of Boelubewhick helped to drill though the tough stainless steel. Even with that I had a nasty burr on the stainless. The best way to clean that up was with a Dremel and a carbide tip. Once those were done I put the engine mount in place with the bolts, washers, nuts and a temporary cotter pin. Surprisingly it fit perfect without having to tweak steel at all!

Internal Rudder Stop

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Time: 3 Hours

Now that I have my finish kit I need to finish up the few little tasks I had started while waiting for the new kit. The first task was to finish the internal rudder stop I got from flyboyaccesories. The stock rudder stops are made from aluminum angle and riveted to the sides of the fuselage aft end. These are pretty ugly and I didn’t like the way they look. So the first thing to do was put it into position and drill for two AN-3 bolts to hold it into position. You can put it on the outside of the bottom rudder hinge or inside the hinge. I decided to put it inside so it looks better. Once I had the holes drilled I quickly found out that the lower rod end hits the inside V of the stop so I marked it and sanded it to fit. 

After cleaning up the center so the rod end didn’t hit I started the process of trimming the left and right ends or legs so that I could get the proper rudder deflection. 


The plans call for 30°-35° left and right and a minimum spacing of 1″ between the aft edge of the rudder and the respective elevator.



 To get the degrees I taped a plumb bob to the tail wheel spring in the center just below the leading edge of the rudder. I then taped a plumb bob to the aft end of the rudder. I then took a protractor at the point of the forward plumb bob and squared it up with the tail wheel. With the protractor in place I marked the 30° and 35° marks and extended them out towards the aft end. Now I had a line that I could swing the rudder to and get the correct measurements. 
So from this point it was just trial and error as I sanded a little bit off at a time to get the rudder to the correct deflection. After that was done I had 33° both left and right and a gap of 1 3/8″ on each side. That’s where I stopped today since I had a tooth drilled earlier and was a little sore. Tomorrow I plan on working on that last rudder task of finishing off the lower cap. 

Finish Kit

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Time: 2 Hours

My girl stepped in and sat at the shop on her day off to wait for RoadRunner transportation to deliver my finish kit on Friday. Of course it arrived at the end of the 4 hour window they gave. The box arrived with no damage and was unloaded  into the shop without any issues. A big thanks to T for sitting there and waiting patiently while I was out flying around the country for work. My goal this morning was to open it up and inventory all the items before I needed to head out to go school clothes shopping for my son Drake. The inventory went great with all items accounted for, except one bag that was listed as back ordered, and only one special screw that had an issue with the head was not formed correctly. Here are a few shots of the process. 

There it is, the next 8-10 months of work for me and I’m very excited to be on the downhill stretch of the build.