Peter

About Peter

plbarrett.com | Certified Flight Instructor (Single & Multi-Engine, Instrument, and Advanced Ground) | Commercial Helicopter

Wings 40 (2.0 hrs)

This entry was posted in Wings Wings - Structure on by

In this session I worked to finish the bell crank routing. I received my new conduit so I added that to the mix. In the first photo you can see I decided on an amalgamation of the ideas I had previously toyed with. I have complete clearance of all tubes regardless of the orientation of the bell crank. This includes two areas at the extremes of bell crank movement indicated with the arrows. 

As you can see there is clearance on both ends.  

I created two brackets that will affix where the bell crank mounts to the spar. One for the green tube and one for the conduit. I used an adel clamp for the blue tubing.      

It might look convoluted, but there is very little stress on any of the tubing… gentle turns. And more importantly there is absolutely no interference with the bell crank under any circumstance. Its important to note that the travel of the bell crank will not be a large when connected to the ailerons, and so I have even more clearance than shown here.

Fuel Tanks 34 (3.0 hrs)

This entry was posted in Fuel Tanks Wings on by

Today it was time to actually fix the leaks. Before I put proseal inside I wanted to do all the sanding and drilling. This way I could clean up the debris before any wet proseal entered the equation.

  

 

 

Here is the first repair. This is in the first section that houses the flop tube and actually isn’t leaking. I wanted to make sure that the leak which is close to the rib on the other side wasn’t coming from this side. 

This is the other side of that rib. Yes, its a mess. But its darn hard to work inside a small 4 inch access hole. The best technique I found was to use a syringe to apply a bead and then popsicle sticks to produce a fillet. 

Here is the third and final section for repair. 

Here is how I applied proseal to the wire.   

I also applied a filet of proseal to the outside of the baffle. I know this isn’t the best, but I figured why not. My last task for the day was to flip the tanks baffle down. Proseal, while thick, does follow gravity. Hopefully the proseal will sit over the next week and fully seal those leaks up! I will close the tanks after I make a final inspection. I may need to add more proseal if anything looks out of sorts. I do not intend to do this for a second time!

Fuel Tanks 33 (2.5 hrs)

This entry was posted in Fuel Tanks Wings on by

Today it was time to start repairing the leaking tank. I started with the dreaded task of removing the processed access plate. I’ve read some posts that say this is a gargantuan task. A few have said its easy, but details on it being easy were sparse.

I started by removing the screws. If you look closely you’ll notice a dab of valve grinding compound on the tip of the philips head screw driver. I was skeptical at first too, but this works wonders in stoping your philips screw driver from caming out of the screw. In fact, it works so well that torqued and prosealed screws were a breeze to take out!   

Now I messed around for a bit before I discovered the secret to removing the access plate. I was trying several different tools, heat gun, MEK… no luck. Then I read a post which said use a plastic putty knife (I have something similar) perfectly perpendicular to the access panel and a hammer (I recommend a dead blow). BOOM! The plate was off in no time. If you subtract the time that I fussed about with other methods, this took less than 10 minutes to do. There is no reason to use a cork seal after figuring out how easy this is!

After a little MEK and scotchbrite action, the plate is ready to be put back on. This bay doesn’t technically have a leak, but one leak is close enough to the rib in the next bay that I’m going to seal in here anyways. 

Next I measured where to cut the access plate holes. I was originally thinking to do all four, but decided to do the two I needed and then go from there.   

Like last time i used my leading edge jig and the drill press rotated 180 degrees with a fly cutter to make the holes.     

Well look at this. I did affix at least one cable to the vent line. Maybe thats why I marked this task as complete. We’ll never know…  

Here are the two holes. I went with 4 inch holes. I went a bit bigger last time. but 4 inches is perfect. After looking at the wire, I’m convinced I can proseal all of the wire with only these two access holes.

I inspected each area to see if I could determine where it is leaking. If you look really closely in this photo you can see a gap. Its tiny, but its there.