Canopy Back In Place

I obviously still have a lot to do with the FWF, but now that I have the majority of the panel area wiring done, I figured I may as well put the canopy back on so I can start chunking away at the other canopy related tasks.  

Overall, the canopy frame fits a lot better than I remembered.  The fit at the front is still horrible, but there's not much that can be done about that given the issue is with the size of the skins Van's supplies.  The front canopy transition will get completely embedded in fiberglass, so that's when I'll also deal with the fit of the skins by making the fiberglass extend the edges down a little further.

With the canopy shut it definitely makes it feel like a real plane inside!

I made a handle for the left side of the canopy and riveted it in place.  It's small, but it doesn't really take much to get the canopy lifted up.  Next up is the canopy latch setup - the latch itself is already bolted in the fuselage, but the canopy frame needs the catch that the hook of the latch grabs.  I definitely need to create some delrin guides.  The canopy flexes enough when it is lowered that I worry about catching the skins on one side or the other (and really beating up the roll bar).  A common solution is to put some delrin wedges on the front side of the roll bar to guide the latch fingers on the canopy frame.

Cabin Heat Cable

I'm waiting on a few items so I can keep working on the firewall forward.  I was originally going to wait to add a backup alternator until after I was flying and decided whether or not I'd do much IFR flying.  Since the whole point of this plane is to travel, I changed my mind and went ahead and sprung for the second alternator now though.  It'll only take one time of being stranded in the middle of nowhere because of a dead alternator for Rose to decide traveling is no fun!  So I purchased a gear driven backup alternator that goes on the accessory pad on the back of the engine.  It puts out 30 amps, which is more than enough to run virtually everything in the plane should the primary alternator die.

The alternator arrived yesterday, but I still need to get a few other things before I can install it (like Loctite 518 gasket maker - even though the alternator comes with a gasket, you're still supposed to use a thin layer of something like Loctite 518 on it as well).

I've been putting off setting up the cabin heat cable for a year.  It was a chicken or the egg problem - it would have been great to set it up while I had full access to the area, but I didn't want to drill holes and run the control cable before I knew what wires would be where.  Now that my wiring is finished though, I have to deal with the contortions required to work down near the floor.  It was slow going, but a success by the end of the day.

First I needed to get the vertical wire bundles against the firewall routed just right so they could make the transition from underneath the tunnel cover.  The wire bundles are pretty stiff and didn't want to bend tight enough.  I loosened up the wrap a bit, which helped.  I temporarily clecoed the cover in place.  The top of the cover where it meets the sides of the firewall recess is a pretty bad fit and has a 1/8" gap. This area is the cabin heat box, so I'll eventually close up the gap with some foil tape or black RTV to keep the heat where it's supposed to be.

The heat control cable winds its way from the panel through the subpanel and down to the flapper of the heat box.  I drilled a hole in the vertical firewall brace - the cable runs through this hole to enter the enclosed heat area under the tunnel cover.  I didn't like having the cable flopping around, so added an adel clamp on the diagonal firewall brace.  I used the existing fuel line adel clamp screw in the big corner brace to attach a standoff bracket and another clamp there as well.  The clamps are just a hair too big for the cable, so Van's recommends adding safety wire to secure it at the clamps.  Seems to work pretty well.

The cable also got a clamp on one of the bolts that connects the actual heat box to the forward side of the firewall.  I cut the cable to length and ran the core wire through a drilled bolt and attached the bolt to the flapper arm.  That was easier said than done!  With all of my wiring in place, as well as the panel itself, getting two arms down to near the floor was tight!

That was enough contorting for the day.  Just one cable run, but still felt good to finally get it checked off the list.

Air Vents

I checked off a random task today - I bolted the air vents in place and connected them to the naca duct in the side skin with scat tubing.  There have been reports of the scat tubing sliding off of the vent adapters, so I put a couple of dabs of RTV on each end (not shown in the pic) to try to keep it from vibrating off.

Engine & Gear Install

Another big milestone!  Time to put the plane on its gear and hang the engine!

I trimmed a few areas of the firewall insulation and foil to ensure that nothing would be pinched underneath the engine mount points. Back when I had test fit the mount and drilled all of the firewall holes, I noticed that the lower outer mounting points were not in the same plane as the rest of them.  That's apparently not all that uncommon.  To take up that gap, we placed a 1/16" thick washer under each lower outer mount point.  With those in place, we put the bolts in and torqued everything down.

I don't have a picture of it specifically, but before we put the mount on, we installed a number of the firewall items, as well as cut the fiberfrax and foil for the recess.

The battery, solenoids, shunt, etc are mounted on top of the insulation, so they do their part in holding it all in place.  The fiberfrax compresses pretty well, so even though it starts out soft, you can still crank down the nuts and screws fairly solidly.  I still need to buy a few longer screws for the fuse holders, so those aren't in place yet.

After the mount was on, we chained it to the engine hoist and lifted the plane off of the rolling cart that has supported it up to this point.  All three gear went on relatively easily.  I put a light coat of grease inside the main gear tower, just as a protection against corrosion.  I've gotten so used to seeing the plane sitting close to the ground that it really seems tall now that it has legs!

Next up, the engine!  It was a bit of a struggle just to get the engine and hoist close enough together.  We tipped the crate up and slide the hoist underneath, which got us close enough that we could then lift the engine and swing it all underneath the lift.  We eyeballed the chains and got it set to what we thought would be a level position.  If we had it to do over again, I would have actually tilted it back a tiny bit to help with alignment, but it worked okay as-is.

The install wasn't easy, but it also wasn't hard.  It's just very sensitive to the slightest off angle.  We started by putting in the lower bolts and tightening them up completely.  Then we let the engine sag under it's own weight (plus the weight of both of us pulling it down), which opened up the top mounting points enough to slip in the top donuts.  The top two bolts took a bit of wiggling to get in place.  With the gear and engine on, she's beautiful!

I discovered one gotcha with the engine install - the Titan comes with a 90 degree oil filter attachment, which allows the filter to more easily be accessed.  Unfortunately, the attachment put the filter right under one of the mount arms.  It was so tight that before I noticed it, we had crushed a small corner of the filter.  I shot off a couple of emails to other builders who I know have Titans, and they all said it worked fine for them.  After one sent me a picture, it was obvious that there is a big spacer that can be inserted on the attachment that pushes the filter a few inches aft.  I sent an email to Continental asking about it, and they responded with an apology, saying they must have forgotten to install the spacer.  I'm guessing they don't always put it on the engines, and they may just not have tracked the fact that this engine was intended for an RV9A, which obviously needs it.  They were great about it though, and said they'd ship me the part right away.

Fuel Tank Bracket & Finishing Up Firewall Prep

Last week I read up on the process for fitting the wings, since that'll be one of the big tasks to do next week.  In doing so, I realized that I had never made the fuel tank attach brackets that mount to the fuselage.  These are very similar to the brackets that are attached to the fuel tank itself.  Unfortunately I didn't have enough 3/16" thick aluminum angle to make the brackets.  I'm sure I had enough material originally, but over the years used it up remaking some other parts or something.  Thankfully there's an onlinemetals.com location in Seattle, so I was able to buy a 12" piece of the 2 1/2" x 2 1/2" angle without paying insane shipping costs from Aircraft Spruce or Van's.  I was surprised that onlinemetals actually carries the right structural angle (vs architectural angle) in the right composition.  The structural stuff has the radiused angle vs just a 90 degree angle with no radius.

The brackets aren't complicated to make, but they take a while just because of the thickness of the material.  Even though aluminum is pretty easy to work with, when it's 3/16" thick, it takes a while to cut and shape it.  That's all I can do on the brackets for now.  They will be match drilled to the fuselage and fuel tank bracket once the wing is in place.

I'm still chipping away at the firewall.  Today I fixed a problem that the plans caused a year or so ago.  When I first built the firewall, the drawings showed to make a doubler for the aux fuel pump that sets below the fuel line fitting.  I dutifully followed the instructions, riveting the doubler and drilling the two big bolt holes.  Sometime down the road I discovered that this was only for the fuel pump used for a carbureted engine.  I hadn't gotten to the point of working on my boost pump setup yet, so I didn't know there was a different setup for an injected engine.  Now I've learned that virtually all of Van's instructions are for the carbureted engine.  I don't think the injected engine was a common choice 25 years ago when the 9 came out.  So now I have two empty bolt holes in the firewall.  I went ahead and riveted a couple of nutplates in place.  I will wait to fill the holes with bolts until later.  Maybe I'll figure out a use for some clamps in that location or something.

Yesterday I put the ground block in place, but I don't think I took a picture.  It's a brass, forest of tabs on the aft side of the firewall.  There is a big, brass bolt that extends through the firewall - the battery ground and engine ground will attach here.  I will actually use very few tabs for grounds, unlike a typical wiring scenario.  For the most part, the ACM takes care of the device grounding internally, so the ACM only needs one big wire going to the airframe ground.  There are a few grounds that the ACM doesn't handle that I'll have to run though, and for anything (like the heated seats) that doesn't go through the ACM, I'll use the forest of tabs.

I think most of the firewall penetrations are sorted out, aside from the control cables (throttle, mixture, alternate air and oil cooler shutter).  I made a poster board template of the firewall and cut out the locations of all of the penetrations.  Some of these spots will have the insulation removed completely because the item is already mounted directly to the firewall, and for other spots I will punch small holes for bolts that will mount objects on top of the insulation.  I'll use the template to cut out the fiberfrax and stainless overlay - hopefully accurately!

I've been putting off riveting the firewall recess in place just because it's handy to have a big, open hole to reach through.  I'm sure I'll regret it at some point, but I think now I'm at the point where there's not really much else to do that I can't easily do just reaching over the top.  So riveting it is!  The recess is full of seams and has gaping holes in the corners, so I ran a bead of sealant under the outside edge and then filled the corners after it was riveted together.  Sticky stuff!

Canopy Latch

I just got notice that my stick grips are on their way.  I also may have found someone who can machine a new bushing for the pilot stick, so hopefully before too long I'll have the sticks all finished up.  Until then, back to random tasks.  Since the seat back brace is now in, I can finally position the canopy latch cable.  I already had the nuts that secure the cable fairly close to where they needed to be, so it didn't take much to find the happy spot that allowed the right amount of movement on both ends of the cable.  I tightened the nuts down, then screwed on the cover plate for the left side.  It cleans up pretty nice!

The standoff for the left side is just a plate that I screwed to the seat brace.

Everything works really well.

I decided to go ahead and throw the panel back on since I need to figure out where to center the glass panels.  Once the sticks are in and I can put the seats in, I should be able to finalize the panel layout.

Top Skin & Misc Interior

I need a little break from wiring.  Not having at least the front portion of the rear top skin riveted on was holding up other tasks, so that's what I tackled this morning before my dogsitting duties started.  It's obviously been a while since I've done any riveting!  The first few rivets were ugly and had to be redone.  After that, the feel of it returned and the rest of the riveting went quickly.  I only did from the baggage bulkhead forward.  I can reach about halfway back inside the tailcone, but figured I might as well do it the easy way and wait for when I have help.

With the top skin riveted to the top fuselage longeron, I can finally put the seat back brace in, which then allows further work to be done.  I thought about leaving it out for a while still just to make crawling back into the tailcone easier for the final finishing touches, but if I use that logic, I'll never finish anything in the plane.  Making progress usually has some tradeoffs in terms of future convenience.

I put the brace into position and got all of the screws and nuts tightened up, but not without a bit of head scratching.  I have a ton of pictures from the initial assembly, but they don't show everything.  The assembly made sense at the time!  I had labeled all of the hardware and put it in baggies, but back then I figured I'd remember which screw went where I guess.  Since this was a modification (and I modified the modification), there really isn't anything to go off of.  I finally got it sorted out and jogged my memory though.  Lesson learned - you can never have too many pictures!

Of course, as seems to be the case almost 100% of the time, things that fit perfectly during initial assembly don't always fit perfectly later on.  I think it usually comes down to the order that parts are put together.  Especially with parts that are screwed together, there is enough slop in holes to make it pretty easy for everything to shift a little.  I wasn't planning on attaching the side panel of the flap motor housing, but I had to in order to get the rest of the parts to line up.  When I initially tightened the flap housing parts to the brace without the side panel, it was obvious the side panel wasn't going to fit.  I put the side panel on as my reference and then tightened everything up.  The other side panel is off, so I have open access to the flap motor still.  Just having the seat brace and the flap housing in place really changes the look and feel of the plane!

With the brace and flap housing in place, now I can move my way through a few other tasks that were somewhat contingent on them.  Even without the canopy in place, I can tweak the position of the canopy latch teleflex cable and get it set to the right length.  The seats from Classic Aero have integral seat frames and don't use the seat backs that I made, so with the seat brace in, now I can set them in place and attach the bottom hinges and rear adjustment angle to them.  Then, with that done, I can put the bottom cushions in place and make sure all is well for the control sticks.  Then the copilot control stick can be drilled (to attach the stick to the permanent portion of the central controls in a way that allows it to be secure but easily removed), and the controls can be finalized and put in place.  I did order the stick grips, so hopefully those arrive soon so I can wire up the pilot grip before putting the controls in place.

Starting Wire Runs

I have actually been doing a little work on the canopy over the past week, but it's been so incremental that it really wasn't worth photos.  I think I have the front bubble fitting pretty well at this point.  The next step is to use the Sika adhesive to permanently attach it to the frame.  As I was reading up on Sika, I found out that it's activated by humidity, and on a normal day it has about a 1 hour time before it begins to skin over.  With it being 80-90% humidity at this point in the year, I'm afraid that I'd be in a serious rush to get nice filets made before it all started to firm up.  I decided to just put a pin in the canopy for now and move on.  I'll attach the bubble next summer when conditions are a little better.  To give myself more shop space, I went ahead and took the canopy and frame back upstairs to store them.  I also took the aft top skin off to make wiring a little easier.  As usual, it feels like two steps forward, one step back, but that's the name of the game!

The center tunnel between the seats was going to be really awkward to get wires run through while the elevator pushrod was in, so I bit the bullet and took the pushrod out.  I also did my once a month vacuuming of the fuselage.  I'll fill it up with more shavings soon enough though.

The last thing I need to do in the left wing before I can close it up is figure out how to run the wire from the pitot regulator to the pitot itself.  I didn't really want to drill more holes in this rib, so I decided to make a wire support that just attaches under two of the existing mounting screws.  I fabricated a little bracket and pop riveted a wire mount to it.  For now the wire is just looped and zip tied loosely.  Once I attach the wing skin and the pitot is in permanently I can attach the wire and tighten the zip tie.  I drilled the remaining hole at the base of the rib for the other pitot tube.  Because the blue pitot tube was more off of the center line than I wanted it to be in order to mate up with the aluminum tubes from the pitot, I took the heat gun to it and reformed it so it landed in a better spot.

There are only a couple of wires that run all of the way to the very back - the wires for the elevator trim servo and tail light.  I crawled into the fuselage and zip tied those to the cable tie mounts I had glued in a long time ago.  I only zip tied them about half of the way forward, because I think I'll also end up putting the ELT antenna near the tail, so that wire will also need to be captured by the zip ties.  I ran the wires up through the left side of the center tunnel.

I'm not 100% sure yet how I want to route the wires from the seating area through the forward center tunnel and up to the subpanel.  I think using some of the corrugated tubing will help keep it organized, so that's what I'm trying first.  I ran tubing underneath the fuel pump base.  It will run underneath the tunnel cover until it gets to the firewall, then it will exit and run up the sides of the firewall stiffeners.  It's probably hard to picture right now, but it can't go up the center because the cabin heat valve will be there. 

NACA scoops

I just have one last task to do before I throw the front top skin back on and and start fitting the canopy bubble - attaching the NACA scoops to the fuselage skin.  These will be connected to the air vents with scat tubing.  There really isn't much in the instructions about how to deal with these.  Some people rivet them, some rivet and use proseal, some proseal only, etc.  I have a bunch of extra proseal in the freezer, so I'm going to go that route.  Even thought it's a sealant and not technically an adhesive, it will still work just fine as an adhesive for something light duty like these scoops.

I scuffed up the flange of the scoop, put a thin layer of proseal on and stuck it to the skin.

I mixed up way too much proseal, so the hunt was on for where I could use some of it up.  One place that will leak on the tip up is where the seal support angle attaches to the subpanel.  I taped off the area and ran a bead of proseal in the gap.  There are still big gaps between the tabs of the forward flange of the subpanel, but I can't fill those in until the front skin goes on for good.  Once it's on, I'll have to crawl underneath and push proseal up from underneath to seal it.

The gap in the seal support angle where the canopy frame hinges go through is going to need some additional work to get rid of a leak path.  It's a spot that people complain about water ingress in rain.  I need to fabricate something that spans the gap and also bumps up over the plastic and under the front skin.  I'll have to play with it a bit to see what works best.  I can either make a single piece of a stepped aluminum sheet and rivet it in, or I could rivet a new piece of seal support in to span the gap, then attach a layer of fiberglass forward of that to cover the gaps between the plastic blocks.  I'm not sure this will be enough to solve the tipup leak issue, but it'll help.  I have a few other ideas for how to really fix the problem.  I just need to noodle on it a bit.

I still had proseal left!  What to fix, what to fix.....Needless to say, that leaky handle on my 5 gallon gas can is now sealed up tight.

Random Items & Canopy Frame Cont'd

I keep chipping away at the canopy. Every step has a problem of course, which is apparently normal.  Let's just say the canopy isn't the shining star of Van's design.  To keep me from throwing things across the garage, I've been knocking off little tasks here and there to keep some momentum going.  I crawled back into the tailcone today and installed the seat belt cables to the anchor point and also ran the static line up to where it'll tee (one tube going to the ADAHRS in the tailcone, the other tube going forward to the instrument panel).  I also stumbled on the fact that the rudder cable is held in place by an adel clamp where it exits out the fuselage to the rudder.  There is a plastic tube running along the last 5" or so of the cable to protect it from the skin at the exit point, and for a long time I've been wondering if I should put some proseal on it to keep it held in place.  Nope, adel clamp.  While I was back there, I saw that I had never put nutplates in place for the elevator control horn access covers.  There is an access hole on each side.  I dimpled all of the holes that I could, but my squeezer wouldn't fit to do the upper screw holes.  I should have dimpled these when everything was a big flat sheet.  I'll have to get creative to figure out how to dimple without the squeezer.

Moving back up to the canopy, I started working on the channel that sets in front of the roll bar and attaches as the back support to the hinged canopy.  It's a thick piece of aluminum that is formed with flanges in a curve, so it requires a lot of fluting to flatten it out.  That's easier said than done because of the thickness.  I got the left side in pretty good shape, but have a ways to go on the right side.  For whatever reason it's been a lot more difficult to get sorted.

I drilled the center splice plate to the left channel.  It won't get drilled to the right channel until things are clamped tight in the right place.

I thought I'd lay out the side rails of the frame to get the general pieces all put together and slowly sneak up on getting everything in the right position before I start drilling and riveting.  I ran into an issue right away though.  The side rails have a piece of aluminum angle welded to the rear.  This angle is supposed to mate up with the channel.  The right side rail is fine, but the left one is welded at a goofy angle.  It doesn't look all that bad, but a 1/8" gap at the base throws the rear face of the angle off so bad that there's no way it can mate up flat to the channel.

On top of that, it's also canted at a major angle.  This is looking top down.  I emailed Van's to ask them about it. Hopefully they'll send a new part.  I don't see how it's usable as-is.

Switching gears again, I looked ahead in the plans to find another task I could knock out.  The front canopy frame skin has three stiffeners that get riveted underneath.  Each of these have 3 big holes that need to have flanges (not sure what they're really called) put into them to stiffen things up.  I'm sure this is one of those tasks that Van's leaves undone to fulfill the 51% rule.  The instructions just say to cut a notch into a piece of wood and work around the hole, bending the skin up 15-25 degrees.  It's not exactly an elegant way to go about it, but works.

Aileron Trim

I wasn't up for fighting with the canopy tonight, so instead pulled out the electric aileron trim to see how that all goes together.  I neglected to take photos of the actual fabrication and how the mechanism all goes together, so here's a beautiful picture of the plans:

I drilled the holes and notches in the block that holds the pivot arm.

Lots of layout, drilling, nutplates, etc later, I had the attach bracket made and the block and pivot arm mechanism attached.  I screwed the bracket to the center seat ribs.  I haven't located and attached the servo motor itself yet.  That'll be up next.

Engine, Canopy and Fuselage Misc

I need to do some catching up from the last week.  I got a call from Continental/Titan a few weeks ago letting me know that they were starting my engine assembly.  One painful check later, and last week I had it sitting in my garage.  It's been bagged/pickled for storage, so I'm just going to leave it as-is until I'm ready to actually hang it.  This is the the Titan IO-340 with low compression (~174 hp) to allow for the use of mogas.  It's set up for a fixed pitch prop, but has the hollow crank, so if I ever decide to go to a constant speed prop it would be a fairly easy swap.

Since the interior is painted (at least the areas that will show), I bought some low tack vinyl and covered up the areas that would be prone to getting damaged while I crawl around the plane.  The vinyl is pretty light weight, but I think it'll do the job.

The center section bulkhead caps can finally get pop riveted in place.

The next big assembly is going to be the canopy, which means the top front fuselage skin needs to go back on to ensure everything is rigid before fitting the canopy frame.  This skin was every bit as difficult to get on as it was the last time!  The trick is a couple of straps and heat, and even with that it was a fight.  The only portion that didn't line up well was the outer left aft side that lays on the sub panel.  I had to drill new holes into the sub panel flange (just the last 3).  When the skin comes off again, I'll put some doublers in place on the flange to make up for the goofy holes.

I can finally start putting in parts for good - the left side canopy latch mechanism is done, although I still need to get the teleflex cable adjusted before I put the cover plate on.  I can't adjust the cable until the horizontal seat back brace is in place though, which I can't put in until the top skin is riveted on.

The latch itself on the right side is in place, but the support for the cable will have to wait for the seat back brace installation.

The next step in fitting the canopy frame is to fill those pesky gaps between the skin and the frame.  I decided to try using aluminum epoxy putty, but no local stores had it, so now I'm playing the waiting game.  Since I had Dad here to help, we decided to tackle the aft top skin on the tailcone.  I don't want to completely enclose the tailcone yet simply because it'll be a little easier to run wiring if it's open.  I didn't want to waste having a second set of hands though, so we glued some wire mounts onto the bottom skin (the tail light and elevator trim wires will be attached to these).  Even with the aft most top skin on, I should be able to reach in from each end and run the wires.

We laid boards onto the bulkheads in the tailcone, put some padding down and I crawled in with a bucking bar.  Dad used the rivet gun on the outside and I bucked from the inside.  In a few hours we had a completed skin.  One more down!  It looks great.  The one area I will probably fix just for aesthetics is the rivet line of the bulkhead in the middle of the skin.  The bulkhead flange is just a hair short, so the skin pulled down at the rivet line.  The rivets are set great, but it creates kind of a slight cinched waist look.  I'll put some very light filler on that line before I paint to flatten it out.

It's really starting to look like a plane!