Time: 6 Hours
Today I had a list of tasks I wanted to complete on the tank ribs and z brackets. My order of nutplates from Aircraft Spruce came so I riveted one to the last z bracket since I had ran short when I was working on them. Next was to finish up the capacitor fuel sending plates since I received my electrical tools. The outboard plate are connected to the inboard plate with an 18 Awg wire. They then are both connected to the fuel gauge system via a BNC connector. I soldered a BNC connector to 15″ of wire for the connection to the inboard plate. I then marked and drilled the 7/16″ hole for the connector on the inboard rib.
The outboard plate gets a 48″ wire bolted to it with a terminal end. The other end, as well as the end of the BNC wire, will also get terminals later when the tanks are riveted. This allows you to fish the wire through the bushings that hold the fuel vent, something you couldn’t do if the terminal ends were in. So with my new crimper I attached the the terminals as well as soldered them per the plans.
I then drilled the holes for the fuel vent line elbows in the inboard rib. This allows air to replace the fuel that is being used by the engine.
Next was to finish up the fabrication on the trap doors for the second ribs.
One other modification that some builders have done is to cover the lightening hole the is in the middle of the second rib, above the trap doors. This also helps keep fuel in the first bay for the flop tubes to pick up when doing aerobatics. I still haven’t decided weather I’m actually going to do this until I research it a little more but I made the plates anyways.
I decided that I would call it a night as it was approaching 10:30 pm but before I did I connected one of the flop tubes to see how it looked. I still need to fabricate the anti-hang-up guides that cover the access panel to prevent the flop tube from hanging on the nutplates.
