I didn’t do much on the plane. With Halloween and Adele’s birthday this week, it’s going to be low on the productivity. I sanded down the filler on the panel, but it still needs one more good sanding overall. I also messed around with laying out some panel labels. For some reason Visio seems to think 1″ = 7/8″. Handy (not).
For some reason, I only get motivated to work on the plane after noon. Despite that, we got a ton accomplished. Julie helped me a bunch with the left wing bottom skin riveting. We got the entire inboard skin riveted. It definitely seemed to go quicker than the first wing. I followed up by squeezing the flap hinge rivets and inboard-most rib.
I also decided it’s high time to get the panel painted. I removed everything from the panel and pulled it out. Didn’t take as long as I thought it would. Looks kind of sad missing the panel.
With the panel off, I drilled holes for the parking brake above the left switch bank and holes to mount the alternate air bracket. There was also one hole in the panel that was pre-drilled for a support rib that I’m not using. I filled that in along with a minor spot that the water jet cutter seemed to have slipped while cutting. I did a ton of other tiny stuff on the panel like cut the cabin heat control cable to size and take an inventory of instrument mounting screws (for ordering hex cap screws from McMaster).
Very productive day.
To finish up the right wing, I did the service bulletin for the fuel pickup. A putty knife made pretty quick work of the access cover I Prosealed on 2 years ago. The inside of the tank still smelled of fresh Proseal. Ah, the memories… Drilled the pick-up nut and safety wired it. Instead of wrapping the wire around the fitting (which seems goofy) I drilled a tiny hole in the anti-rotation bracket. It took a little while to clean up the proseal with a putty knife and sandpaper. I didn’t Proseal the cover back up yet, as I’m waiting until I do the other tank.
Julie helped me put the right wing back in the dolly and turn the whole thing around. Time for the left wing. I started by installing the rest of the tank nuts and screws.
While waiting for some riveting help, I started working on the engine management system (EMS) harness. I drilled a hole in the subpanel for a snap bushing, but I’m still debating on the firewall penetration. Above the battery seems to be the only logical place. I’ll place it as high as possible to make battery removal not entirely impossible.
I also sorted the EMS harness into don’t need (carb temp, etc.), aft of subpanel (trim indicators), aft of firewall (amps, fuel level), and firewall forward. I hooked up the wires to the amp shunt and capacitive tank sender converters. (Don’t let the paper cut-out fool you. I still don’t have the glass panels yet. Besides that’s the back of the panel.)
Lots of progress all over.
There’s more to these landing lights than I expected. It mainly took a while because I spread it over so many sessions. Well, I finally finished the one for the right wing. The instructions make it sound like the lens will fit through the hole with the bracket in place, but I didn’t find that to be the case. No big deal, though. Just wait until the end to secure the bracket. I used the tape handle trick to hold the lens in place, drilled, deburred, dimpled, etc. In the end the plexiglass fits pretty good. There’s a couple of gappies at the top between the screws, but it still looks great overall.
There hasn’t been much progress this week. Last night I went to a runway safety meeting at Renton Airport. I was expecting more specific local information, but it was all generic stuff like yellow lines are taxiways and white lines are runways. Yawn.
Tonight I got a bit further on the landing lights, installing nut plates for the bracket and then putting it in place. I trimmed the plexiglass lens to size as well. It seems to be a slightly different material than the canopy plexi. Using the fiberglass cutting wheel for the big cuts, it kind of melted instead of making a snow storm. I used the stationary belt sander to get right to the lines, which also made kind of a melted slurry.
I just about have the landing light wrapped up, and that’s about all I did this week. Hopefully this weekend will be productive as next week isn’t looking much better with Halloween and Adele’s birthday coming up.
Spent most of yesterday evening messing around with the computers. The fan in our Dell started making a high pitched noise a while back. Tried ordering a replacement fan. Same thing. I ended up replacing the fan with a quieter version. We’ll see if that fixes it.
On the plane, I marked and cut the hole in the right wing for the Duckworks landing light. I used a cut off wheel in the die grinder followed by a cutting bit in the Dremel for the corners. A bit nerve wracking cutting a hole in the wing, but it turned out really nice after some filing and smoothing. Drilled the holes for the attachment nut plates and that was it for the night. The drilling is a little tricky, but overall it’s been a pretty easy install even with the leading edge on the wing.
A must-do for today was to rent a 172. I can’t believe it’s been almost 3 months since my BFR, and I’ve done no flying. Boeing Field was a bit crazy when I got there with lots of business jets arriving for the Seahawks game. By the time I was in the air, I was the only one around. Eerie. I did 4 perfect touch and gos (not surprising considering the perfect weather) and called it good. I’ll need to do a lot more flying to get ready for the test phase.
With the wing riveting done, it was time to install the servo for the wing leveler autopilot. I assembled most of it on the bench, although doing the safety wire for the servo bolts would have been a really good idea, too.
The bellcrank had some fore/aft slop in it. I chucked the brass bushing in the drill press and shortened it up about 1/32″. That caused a minor problem when I went to install the assembly in the wing. The bolt holes didn’t line up. I added a -416 washer between the bushing and the bellcrank bracket and the problem was solved. I used the jig Vans provides to find the neutral point for the bellcrank and made sure the servo arm was at a 90 degree angle per the instructions. I maneuvered the torque wrench in there to tighten everything down and applied torque seal.
Big day today. I started running the EFIS wires around a bit more seriously. I discovered there were two black wires, when I was expecting one. The shorter one didn’t seem to be connected to anything and then I figured out it was the shields for the communication wires. It’s supposed to be connected to a ground. I’m sure there’s a better connector housing out there (i.e. not plastic) that the wire could have been connected to and then it would have been automatically grounded.
I debated quite a bit on how to hook the various wires from the avionics harness to the EFIS harness. In the end, I decided no intermediate connector would be best. I tore apart the EFIS harness a bit, removed the appropriate wires/pins, crimped pins onto the end of the avionics harness wires and integrated them into the EFIS harness. Worked out really well. I attached the EFIS altitude output to the transponder, the serial line to the GPS, and the audio output to the audio panel. There are a couple of extra wires I’m not using right now. Instead of removing them, I put shrink wrap over the ends and coiled them up. The only wire not connected yet is the flap position contact for the AOA.
As long as I was working on wiring, I ran some wires to the F-704 covers for the cabin lights and connected them to the dimmer. I also connected the capacitive fuel sender converters to power and ground. I decided to put them on the avionics bus with the EFIS and EMS. I also ran some wires to the EMS area for power and ground. I guess I’ll be making mine own connector for that, which is just fine.
On top of all that progress, Julie was ready to finish off the right wing bottom skin. Adele had a friend over playing, so what could be more fun than riveting on a Saturday night?!? We got it finished off. Woo hoo! One down, one to go.
Installed the shunt for reading the current from the alternator. I didn’t really plan for this very well, but it worked out great. I removed the wire from the fuse block, positioned the shunt so that the wire reached perfectly, drilled it to the firewall, and made a short jumper going back to the fuse block.
After reading the directions carefully 3 times, I drilled #30 holes in the exhaust pipes for the temperature probes. The instructions say that 3″ is ideal, but there’s a joint in the #1 pipe at that point. I moved the probe up to 2.5″ and tried to position the other probes the same distance from the exhaust flange. The curvature of the pipe on #2 made it a little difficult, but it’s within 1/4″.
I started routing wires from the EFIS harness yesterday, but then became concerned that the EFIS/EMS box might be too deep with the connectors installed. The dimensions on the web site says it’s 5.5″, which leaves just enough room for the wires to bend out of the way of the subpanel. With that resolved, I routed the outside air temperature (OAT) probe wire out to the left wing and the remote magnetometer (i.e. compass) wire to the rear of the fuselage. I’ll mount the magnetometer at the top of the F-707 bulkhead. That will put it well out of the way of anything ferrous except for the harness cables, which I’ll degauss. The OAT probe will go on the bottom of the left wing.
I did some more head scratching over the fuel flow sensor. According to AFS, mounting the sensor close to bends in the line isn’t a good idea. My new preferred location is in the line from the mechanical pump to the fuel servo. I can get the Stratoflex line cut, new fittings installed, and then mount the sensor in the middle of it wrapped in firesleeve. The EI documentation indicates it can be installed in flex line as long as it’s within 6″ of a support. This picture shows the spot I’m thinking of.
I also identified the 6 or so black wires in the EMS harness. They all connect to a common ground, but I decided to actually identify each one based on the pin it’s connected to. I might also remove several wires that I don’t need, RPM sensor power/ground, tank level 3/4, and flap position. It looks like I’ll need to move the tach wire from pin 32 to 33, but I’ll confirm that first.
I’m still trying to figure out how to hook up the manifold sensor. I wrote to Emagair to ask what kind of tubing they included with the P-mags. It’s a high temperature silicone tubing. I looked it up at McMaster-Carr and it sounds perfect. The thick wall 1/4″ tubing is rated to 15psi and 500°F. Perfect.