Category Archives: Forward Section

Time: 2 Hour’s

I always say any time in the Hangar is good time! I wasn’t feeling the greatest after I got home from work, allergies kicking in. But this afternoon I got a little time in the shop. I wanted to finish up the cover plates for the bottom of the landing gear attach points. Not too much work just cleaned up all the edges and trimmed the outboard edge to to clear the landing gear and primed the interior side.

The next thing I worked on was to make the extensions for the fuel vent lines. These will extend thru the plates and allow the fuel to vent overboard.

I will eventually finish off those vents with some type of mesh bonded to the end to prevent bugs from getting in. That was all the work I did for the day, but any work is good work.

Time: 6 Hours

I got back from my 2 week trip, 1 week in Vegas/California and 1 in Tucson for my 6 month flight training and checkride. The first couple of days back were given to cleaning house, doing laundry and finishing errands. My girl is moving to Chicago with me from Omaha next week so I had to prepare the house for her and some of her belongings. After that stuff was done I planned a breakfast with my buddy Glen for this morning. I am so lucky that he is always willing and able to come give me a hand when needed! I was at the stage of needing to rivet the bottom skins in preparation for attaching the landing gear. We first started with the forward crossmember and riveted it to the forward floor as those rivets will be covered up by the bottom skins. Next up was to rivet the two forward bottom skins. Before that could be done you need to deal up some of the edges where the floor meets the firewall to prevent any oil, gas or fumes from entering the aircraft. I mixed up some ProSeal and sealed all those areas.

We then installed the two bottom skins and riveted all the parts together along the lower longeron. We then did all the holes on the inboard side of the skins. With the skins in place we moved aft and finished up all the holes on the lower longeron followed by the forward flange of the center section. With the center section firmly in place I was able to remove the bolts that I was using as spacers for the wing spar attachment. We then put in al the screws, washers and nuts in all the gear tower skin holes, there were a few that had me swearing like a sailor!

Since the ProSeal was still workable we used it and moved on the the cooling ramp. Same theory is applied to keep bad stuff out of the aircraft by sealing up the contact points. We first riveted the ramp to the firewall and bent it down to rivet the forward edge to the floor.

While I has some ProSeal still available I grabbed the rear seat vent pass thru to seal and rivet it in place. This will help with cold air infiltration and help keep that passenger warmer durning cold flights.

I moved over to the cooling ramp and taped off the side wall and the ramp to create a small opening right along the gap that was at the the ramp/bottom skin joint. I mixed up another batch of ProSeal and filled that gap. I used my finger with a glove on and smoothed the sealer to make a nice filet. After removing the tape I cleaned up any mess I made.

I spent a while cleaning up all the mess we made in the shop as well as all the sealer on the clecko’s. I was going to call it a day but just had to put the gear in place. I was able to get most of the bolts with the nuts except 4. Next week we will get to torquing all the bolts and flip this bad boy back over and let it sit on its legs!

Another great day in the Hangar and wouldn’t have been with out the help of my buddy Glen!

Time : 4 Hours

Today I start work on the forward bottom skins. I had several tasks at hand, besides finishing the edges of the three skins.
The first task was to trim the edge of where the key or access panel will be to make sure it cleared for the newly installed gear brackets and bolts. This Took some time putting the skin on, marking it, removing the skin, removing the material and return in the skin to the fuselage. The plans have you do the step earlier on however since my gear alignment moved aft I needed to readjust this trim.

The next task was to enlarge the 4 holes in the skins that will allow a socket to gain access to the AN4 bolts on the outboard wear plates.

I then deburred all the holes, enlarged the screw holes to a #19 drill bit and rolled the aft edge of the aft skin. I then grabbed my DRDT dimpling machine and dimpled all the required holes. The inside of the skins got scuffed, cleaned and primed as well.

I ran some errands and let the primer dry for an hour or so. When I returned I started the riveting process. Van’s has you put 2 blobs of blue RTV sealant in the space that is too narrow for a bucking bar to give some skin support on the aft end of the aft bottom skin.

The plans have you rivet the aft ribs first by lifting the outboard edge of the skin while the rib/skin joint is clecko’d. It’s a tight fit but you can do it with a very thin bucking bar. Next you are supposed to remove the forward crossmember as this will give you access to rivet the aft crossmember. Well since I created my battery box on the angled support I had riveted the two nut plates to it, oops. So I could either drill all those out or I could use blind rivets on the 9 holes that I could not access on the forward crossmember. I chose the later! So that meant that I had very limited access to rivet the aft crossmember by lifting a small flap of the skin. That was tough but I was able to get all the rivets done. I then drilled the rivets that would get the blind rivets to a #34. I calculated the thickness and it was at the top range of my MK-319-BS flush rivets so that worked well.

Thats where I stopped for today as I need a bucking partner to get the aft edge of the skin rivets as well as the forward edge of the forward cross member. The outboard edges of that cross member get covered by the two forward skins and you would have no bucking bar access if you went ahead of this step. After I get help I will be able to rivet the two forward skins and the cooling ramp. Another good day in the Hangar oh and today marks the crossing of the 1000 hour mark!

Time: 6 Hours

My buddy Glen stopped by yesterday to give me a hand at match drilling the gear inboard attach brackets. The inboard end of the gear legs have a 7/16″ hole already drilled in them. You use that hole as a guide to drill the bracket. After that hole is complete you can use the newly created bracket hole to match drill the inboard wear plate. After cleaning up the new holes we placed the gear leg, inboard wear plate, inboard bracket and the outboard wear plate into position and placed the bolt in the holes.

We repeated the process for the other gear leg.

With the legs in place and the bolts hand tightened I started the process of aligning up the legs. You have two jobs when lining up the gear. The first is to make the gear leg faces line up and be square. To do this you run a plumb bob at the very outboard edge on the face/fwd side. Then you run another plumb bob somewhere in the middle, I did 8″ inboard of the first line. Now you can run a taught string on the ground and adjust the legs so all 4 plumb lines hit the string on the ground. This tells you that you have the two faces square.

Now you need to make the squared faces perpendicular to the centerline of the fuselage. To do this I dropped a plumb bob in the tooling hole in the aft end of the fuselage. I then taped two tape measures to the ground and put the V of the two right at the plumb line so that each tape measure was at the 12″ mark. I then took the other end to the outboard gear leg plumb bobs and made those dimensions equal.

The last tweak is to make the space between the outboard edge of the outboard wear plate 3/16″ inboard of the longeron edge.

I then got to drilling, first with the forward 3/8″ hole of the outboard bracket. I placed a bolt in that hole and drilled the aft hole. I used a lot of Boelube and a slow drill speed. Once those two holes are complete I did the inboard 5/16″ holes. For the next two holes I hit the 1/4″ inboard wear plate holes but I had to drill up through the gear weldament and through the wear plate. That wasn’t fun drilling up underneath the fuselage. The last two holes are the 1/4″ wear plate holes on the outboard ends. So that’s 9 holes per gear leg that needed drilling. I repeated the process on the opposite side. That took a couple of hours as I was taking my time to make sure all alignment was kept in place.

That’s where I called it a day in the Hangar. I feel really good at finishing that task. I had been studying the plans and reading several builders blogs to make sure I understood the plans. On to the forward bottom skins.