With the bulk of the Avionics, wiring and software work done, I’ve spent the past few months back on airframe and related work, pushing towards the point where I’m ready to take everything to the hangar. Lots of small to medium scale jobs, chipping away at the overall task. Here’s what I’ve done:
- Wing wiring. I ran and labelled all wiring for both wings, and temporarily hooked up with wingtips, pitot, etc. and all connections to the fuselage, with the wings still sitting in the wing stand. I tested all functions, and found two minor issues – the landing and wigwag switches were reversed, and I had forgotten to run a wire from right to left side for the strobe synchronization. Apart from this, all good so I could now close up the wings.
- Riveted bottom wing skins. This was a tedious job, which we did with each wing in turn laid flat on a pair of workbenches. The first wing took about 12 sessions across 4 days. Then we had a break for about a week, before tackling the second wing which took about the same number of sessions but stretched across a few extra days. Not many pictures of this, didn’t do much that deviated from the instructions, but due to the size of my forearms I found it impossible to reach down to the rear spar between the close-together ribs under the wing walk doubler. I made up a special long bucking bar, by taping a tungsten bar on the end of the RV-10 elevator bucking bar, which I could then hold in position. Not a great option, but good enough to get the job done cleanly.
- Clear coat and install the centre console. This went in OK, as did the headset panels I previously designed and made up. Also included in this area are the throttle and pitch controls, fuel valve extensions etc. It’ll be a mild nuisance to take apart at each annual, but with the tunnel cover breaks I have in place won’t be too bad. The finished look is great.
- Fitted the Matco brakes, brake lines, and filled the system with brake fluid. I replaced the standard O-rings in the Matco brakes with Viton rings, for high temperature stability, since I never need to worry about deep sub-zero conditions in Australia. I used Royco 782 brake fluid. No leaks, thankfully.
- Wheel spats. Another tedious activity. I mostly followed the plans, except:
- I used the RVbits leg intersection fairings, because the ones supplied in the kit are terrible.
- I used a laser level for all the relevant measurements, much easier than plumb bobs etc.
- I found my jacks crept down a bit over time, which is a problem for doing the spats because it takes a succession of fiberglass jobs over several days to do it all. I made up a wooden stand, that went under the main spar (with 3/16″ of hard rubber padding), used the jacks to raise it all, then lowered the stand onto wooden boards. A few Alclad shims under one side was enough to level the airframe in roll, and a tie-down on the tail was used to get the pitch into the cruise attitude. When it came time to do the nose wheel, I raised it higher by adding an extra board under each side and re-leveling.
- I split the lower main wheel leg intersection fairings on each side, and fiber glassed the fairings into the respective front and rear spat halves. This is a bit more work to get right, but makes it simpler and easier to remove and reinstall the spats.
- I painted the inside of the spats. I figure they’ll fill up with dirt and mud and require cleanout occasionally, and this seals up the fiberglass interior to make it easier to wash any accumulations away.
- Since I’m using the Matco brakes, I had to cut out a section of the main wheel fairing brackets, to clear the brake line connection. I reinforced the area with some scrap Alclad to restore stability to this part.
- The gaps between the front and rear spat halves, particularly on the nose gear fairings, were a bit irregular so I took the time to fix them up with micro.
- Finalized everything behind the baggage bulkhead so that I can rivet on the final top skin.
- All sorts of miscellaneous jobs, too numerous to list. These seem to be never-ending.
I’ve come to realize that if I don’t move everything to the hangar soon, it may become too wet and muddy around the workshop over the winter months to easily do the move. The mud around here is amazing – it can be like grease without too much rain at all. My current activities are aimed around doing this move in the coming weeks.
