Category Archives: Forward Section

Rudder Pedal Work

Posted on by — 5 Comments ↓

Time: 2 Hours

I primed and painted the rudder cable supports for the rear passenger pedal.  These supports tie the forward writer cables that go from the rudder pedals to the supports and the writer cables that go to the aft end of the fuselage. I also sized and cut the cable attach bars that go from the forward cables to the actual rudder pedal sides.  

   These get cut to length based on where you place the rudder pedals in the four choices you have. In my case I am one notch from the most forward location which meant I would need three holes left in the attach plates.  
    
 You may notice that on the right side rudderpedal the bolt is going from outboard to inboard. This is not normal to prevent you catching yourself on the edge of the bolt and nut. However I had to do it this way otherwise the bolt and nut would rub on the side panel. I used a shorter bolts through the support bar where the two cables come together as I’m not putting the rear seat rudder pedals in place at this time. If I was this boat would be longer as it would go through a rod end as well.  

 I’m always surprised how much time it takes for small tasks, but trying to work in those tight spaces with small cotter pins is tough. 

First Wiring

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Time: 6 hours

I had received a couple packages in the mail a week and a half ago from various vendors. One was from Summit Racing which had the elbow I needed for my smoke tank high pressure hose. This had a male fitting on one side and a swivel female on the other allowing me to hold the perfect angle as I tightened it down. So I installed the elbow and cut the high pressure hose to the correct length. With the hose cut and installed I tightened down the hose clamp and secured the rest of the hose with zip ties.  

   The other deliveries were from Aircraft Spruce, Avery Tools and Dynon.  
 The Avery box had the custom flap push rods that I knew I wanted to get eventually and heard they were retiring and closing shop so I placed the order. All the other stuff was for wiring avionics. Firs up was to run the pre made harnesses for the ADSB and Transponder. I figured out the route in which I wanted to use and ran the bundles. I put the avionics shelves back in place and taped the avionic mockup sin place to start the layouts.  Once I was satisfied with the routes I zip tied and used adel clamps to secure a place.  

    
 I ran the bundles thru various snap bushings and zip ties on their way to the front. I’m not sure to the exact length they will need to be until I solidify the panel and where items will be. So I curled up the remaining length and zip tied them for later work. I used my shrink tube printer to mark the bundles for easy identification later.  

   I installed the bracket I made to hold the EMS box to help with wire length planning.  
 The other Barnes I wanted to run was the network cable from aft area to the from avionics bay. The Dynon system uses this 9 pin d-sub connections to tie each and every component together so they all talk to each other. Each component has multiple connections so that you may tie others into and out of them.  Dynon makes a 5 port hub to allow 4 item to plug in and one out. My plan was to run one line from the two ADAHRS, via a splitter, from the back to a hub in the avionics bay.  Dynon makes these harnesses in various lengths starting at 1.5′ and up to 30′.  So I bought one that gave me enough length to make it up to the avionics area plus a bunch extra that I can use for other runs after cut. Dynon puts a connection on one end and just the pins on the other so you can fish through small openings.  

   I figured out a good spot for one of the 5 port hubs on the forward avionics wall.  
 Last item I worked on was the Hobbs hour meter. I took some advice from my buddy Glenn to install one even though the Dynon system will keep track of it. The reason is that it’s nice to be able to just look at the meter without having to power up the aircraft. This hour meter will be used to mark key maintenance items.  I wasn’t to fond of having this big gauge in the cockpit. While at AirVenture this year I saw another RV that had the meter inside his forward cargo area facing forward. I thought this was great, it isn’t inside the cockpit and it will be easily accessible by opening up the cargo door. So I did some measuring and came up with the spot that’s close to the edge but does not interfere with the door. I used my Dremel tool to cut the opening and drill the holes for the attachment hardware.  

   All this happened last weekend and I was a little behind in blogging about it. I was in Las Vegas for the NBAA convention and had a three day trip right after. Not sure how much time I will get in the hangar this week as its Thanksgiving and we are excited to have family here for the first time in our new home. I have a lot to be thankful for! 

Control Sticks & Smoke Oil Fill

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Time: 6 Hours

Today I worked on installing, at least temporarily, the pilot and passengers control stick grips. I purchased the grips from Tosten Manufacturing after looking at them at AirVenture 2015. First task was to come up with a rough height for the pilots control stick as the original part is too long. After coming up with the link I took the stick out of the aircraft and cut it with a hacksaw. With the stick cut I marked a spot at the lower section to drill a hole for the wires to exit.  

 To make it easier to fish the wires down through I put some shrink tube on the end of the wires   
   once I had the hole drilled in the bottom of the control stick I was able to slide the wires through and do some measurements to see how the grip fit. It took me several tries to get the length just perfect so that it cleared the bottom of the instrument panel and crossmember. 
    
 A nice feature of these grips is the collar that the grip slides into. This gets held in place with a drilled hole and cap head screw which also holds the grip into position. This collar also allow for the grip to be twisted and raise up around 3/8″ as required to get a perfect fit to your hand position. I drilled a 3/16″ hole 1/2″ from the top and inserted the screw and jam but to hold it for now.  

 I basically repeated these steps for the passenger grip with an addition to putting the pilot seat back in place which is the limiting factor to the height as you don’t want the grip to hit the back of the seat when pushed full forward.  

    
 The grips turned out awesome and I love the feel. The pilot grip has a trigger that will be the push to talk button. The left lower thumb button will be for smoke. The hat in the center is for trim and the toggle to the left for flaps and to the right will be for COM 1/2 switching. There is a pinky button below the trigger for autopilot touch steering. The passenger will just have trim and the push to talk. From there I moved to another modification that I’m follow my buddy on. The oil tank obviously needs to be filled with oil at some point. The first way is to reach in and pour oil in via a cap on the tank. The next and better way is to use an external full kit that I bought from smokingairplanes.com. It allow you to open a cap like a fuel cap and pour oil in and not mess with the possibility of making a mess inside you airplane. Glenn showed me a photo of a P-51 Mustang and their center fuel tank fill port on the left side just under the canopy.  

 So we are gonna put ours just like that! Glenn had a side canopy fiberglass skirt from his last project so I used it to mark the location that it will lie on the fuselage.  

 From there I made the mark for the location of the 2″ hole. Glenn helped me hold the skin on the drill press to make the cut with the fly cutter. I used the support ring to mark all six holes for the screws.  

   I drilled the center of the holes with a #40 drill bit followed by a #11 for the #10 screw.  

 After all six holes were drilled I screwed the fill cap into position.  

    
   I will eventually paint the cap red to give that P-51 look. I’m really done with the items in the back except for a couple of wiring harnesses and those will arrive on Monday. So I started cleaning up a few items that I had on hold. First was to trim the cabin heat cable to its final size. I wanted to drill the tee for the smoke tank system that goes through the firewall. This tee will direct oil to both exhaust pipes. I drilled the 9/16″ hole and put the tee in place.  
 With the fitting in place I could cut the cabin heat cable to the correct length so it doesn’t interfere with the tee or my rudder pedals.  

   One last item was to cut the fuel boost pump wired and crimp some ring terminals on the ends. I then screwed them to a two place terminal block. This will allow me to unscrew them in the future for easy replacement as needed.  
Thats where I called it a weekend and will get back at it tomorrow when my parts arrive. 

  

.

Panel Structure 

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Time: 6 Hours

After having breakfast with the guys this morning we headed to the shop for some work. Glenn was at a stage where he was ready to attach the wings to his fuselage to start the work on all the measurements that are needed to square them up. With the help of a couple other guys we made quick work of this step and got both installed.  

    
    
   Talk about motivation, wow that was fun and it looks great! So last Thursday I received my parts from Aircraft Spruce and slipped the remaining nuts in the roll bar and torqued them.  
   I had a trip up to Minneapolis  this week and had some time to kill. So I jumped in the rental car a made my way over to SteinAir to get some wire. I spent over 2 hours there visiting with Chris and got the “dime” tour. I got a lot of questions answered and some changes to the wire I needed. What I was looking for was the wire I needed for my pitch trim and the tail light. I needed them to run them through the tail cone before I can rivet the top skin. I also picked up one of their eyeball vents to install in my panel. So after we got Glenn’s wings in place I set out to cut the holes for the ELT remote head and the new eyeball vent. I used the drill press to drill the corners of the ELT and used the Dremel tool to cut the lines. It took some file work to get them nice and square. I then used the fly cutter to drill the 2″ hole for the vent.  
   I then put the parts in place to have a look at how they payed out.  
    
 I then removed the parts and scuffed and cleaned the panel parts for primer. I followed that by riveting on the nutplates on.  

   That’s where I decided to call it a day and clean up the shop. A really fun day in the Hangar today. I want to get the panel parts done and painted so I can install them. From there I will be working on projects that will allow me to get the tail top skin riveted on. 

Roll Bar

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Time: 2 Hours

I got in the hangar today for a couple of hours last Tuesday and installed the freshly painted roll bar. First I had to remove the top skin to give myself access to the area. Then I man handled it until I got a couple of the holes to line up again so I could slip a couple bolts in place to hold it into position. I was able to get the four bolts that hold the side flanges in place and one each end of the top plate before I ran out of AN3-5A bolts. I had ordered a bunch of parts from Aircraft Spruce which included these bolts. I will install them when they get here.  

    
   I’m at a point where I need to decide, for easy access, what if anything I want to install in the instrument side panels. These will be riveted in place soon and having them out and accessible makes cutting holes for things a lot easier. I know for sure that on the left side I will be putting my air vent. I really like the clean look and less clutter and have been working on that idea for a while. Everything else like switches will be in my custom side panels. One thing I think I will be putting on the right side panel is the ELT, Emergency Locater Transmitter, control panel. It’s small and won’t take up much space. The reason for it to go here vs the side panel is that it will be facing aft vs facing up in the side panel. It have a little bit of a recess to protect the buttons and I think it will be a dust catcher if that recess were to be facing up kinda like a cup. So I marked the dimensions on the panel to have a look.