Vertical Stab Fairing

Posted on by Neal

With my Dad in town, it was great to get his expert advice and handiwork with the firbreglass fairings. Being a boat builder back in New Zealand, my Dad has a lifetime of skill and experience working with all kinds of things including fiberglass. He’s a master at the stuff, so he went to work on the rudder and vertical stabilizer fairings.

The VS fairing needs an insert of glass on the aft edge and Dad made quick work of getting it made up and glassed in. the only real challenge was getting the fairing square. The piece is molded in two half’s then glued together, but there seems to be some slight misalignment of the halves casing it to be slightly lopsided. Dad got it pretty straight, so it looks awesome.

Canopy Frame

Posted on by Neal

Since the end of November, I’ve been working on the canopy frame. After debuting and priming everything, I spent time carefully following the steps called out in the plans. There is some fluting required that helps shape the substructure and allowing it to sit flush against the skin. Everything has gone well so far, and the frame seems to be coming together quite easily. Some of the steps in the plans appear out of order, but I’m doing the best I can to follow along.

Propeller Delivery

Posted on by Neal

Today the propeller was delivered! It looks to be in good shape, so I moved the box inside and stored it up out of the way. I’ll hold off opening the box until I’m closer to installing it. With the amount of salt in the air here (not crazy, but still some) I’d rather keep it reasonably picked in the box vs. taking it out and exposing it to the elements.

Installing roll bar

Posted on by Neal

Tonight I finished the roll bar install by riveting the last few rivets between the roll bar brace and the bulkhead, and the few remaining side skin rivets. For the rollbar to bulkhead rivets, I rolled the fuselage upside down and worked inside the cockpit. It’s so great being able to rotate it around freely, it makes working in the cockpit so much easier.

Installing roll bar

Posted on by Neal

Tonight I installed the roll bar on the fuselage. The bar fit surprisingly well, it just slipped on like a perfectly-fitting shoe. I did have some alignment challenges on the right side, but after some fiddling around and using alignment tools, I was able to get it all to work. I riveted everything except a few rivets where the brace joins the bulkhead. I’ll get those with the rivet gun tomorrow when it’s not so late at night.

All was well until the very last river. It was getting late and I was hurrying to get to bed, and made a bad call. I was setting the last cherrymax rivet that held my fix in place, and the rivet was slightly misaligned. For some reason I thought it would straighten out, and I set the rivet on an angle. Instead of being flush with the top of the rollbar, the manufactured head was at an angle, with one edge protruding up. If it wasn’t a cherrymax, I would certainly drill it out and replace, but that’s so hard to do with a cherrymax. I decided to leave as-is and will use some filler to smooth out the surface. Super frustrating mistake after everything had gone so well.

Roll bar riveting

Posted on by Neal

Tonight I worked on my fix for the mistakenly countersunk roll bar flange. I finished the doubler, primed it, and glued it into position with clecos holding it in place. I needed to glue it so I could uncleco it without the doubler falling inside the rollbar.

I also made a test piece with exactly the same dimensions as the roll bar sandwich. I drilled two holes and tested the two different lengths of cherrymax rivets, because the thickness is almost exactly 1/4 inch, right between the two sizes. Based on this experiment, I chose the shorter length which gives a better looking shop head.

Roll bar fix

Posted on by Neal

After talking to Kevin at Vans, I decided I can save the mistake I made in the roll bar by creating a sandwich of aluminum around the mistskenly countersunk part. I made up a doubler, and ordered some longer cherrymax rivets.

I also started riveting the roll bar straps into place.

Canopy latch

Posted on by Neal

Tonight I started on the finish kit! I spent some time reorganizing parts and getting rid of now empty boxes and bins. Then I started work on the canopy latch, the first thing I can do without having the roll bar installed.

The first step is to straighten the parts and then clean them up with a file. With that done, the knob is installed, and then the parts are installed into the fuselage.

It’s nice to have another tangible control that moves, installed into the cockpit. It was fun to move the latch, and satisfying to feel and hear the click when it locks into place. I decided not to paint it, as there wouldn’t be enough clearance without scraping paint off the parts. It could also use a trim to allow the handle to sit flush with the outside of the fuselage. I’ll leave it for now and sand it down later.

The two parts of the latch mechanism
Straightened, filed, knob and spring installed
The latch from the inside
Latching mechanism