Wings

Fuel Tanks 32 (2.0 hrs)

This entry was posted in Fuel Tanks Wings on by

Okay, first thing is first. I’ve been slacking on keeping up with my posts, and tonight I find myself several posts behind. I’m tired, so they are likely to be sparse on the details. Hopefully I’ll update them more thoroughly this week.

In other news of my slacking, I’ve not been doing a good job taking pictures during my recent sessions. I blame this on using my phone to play music in the hangar.

In this session I set out to leak test my two tanks. Mike Rollison lent me the manometer shown below. The leak test kit is courtesy of Mike Bullock. Man, KDMW is great for pilfering and borrowing tools for free!

The setup is simple. Connect the manometer to the fuel intake and close everything else up. Then pump air into the tank via the stem valve connected at the fuel drain. I used 4 inches as recommend by Van’s.        

Well, wouldn’t you know it. The first tank leaks in two spots along the baffle. This is the tank that I replaced the baffle during the z-bracket disaster of 2014. IMG_7748.JPG

Thankfully, the second tank was rock solid. I left the hangar with 3.5 inches of water, and when I returned half an hour later…

There was more than 4.5 inches! The temperature was going up rather steadily with the mid-day sun. Its clear this tank has no leaks. 

Hangar prepped for fuselage 

This entry was posted in Fuselage Wings on by

My quick build fuselage will be arriving this coming Friday. The way my hangar is currently organized, I won’t have any room for it, so I needed to rethink the organization. As an engineer, I’m a big fan of engineer’s paper. I took some measurements of all the basic items in the hangar at the end of last session. And then I printed out a scaled copy of my hangar-mate’s Piper Cherokee. I used scale cutouts to determine the best arrangement in the hangar.

Here is the current arrangement.

And here is the arrangement I planned.

Moving everything wasn’t as painful as I expected. The smooth even concrete floor makes everything a breeze. After my previous hangar, I’m constantly delighted by the perfection that is concrete. The only difference in my new layout and the one above is the position of my fire cabinet.

In the first few photos you can see the back of the hangar where the work benches and shelves used to be. I’ve cleared this area out, and this will be the fuselage’s new home.  

Here’s where the fire cabinet resides. Not ideal… but I’ll keep thinking on it.     

The new home for the workbenches and shelves.   

After all of this, I finished countersinking the flap braces, cleaned up, and called it a day.

Wings 38 (5.0 hrs)

This entry was posted in Wings Wings - Structure on by

When I arrived at the airport today I saw a T-34 sitting on the line. From afar, I didn’t take much notice. There are plenty of T-34Bs around, but as I got closer I realized this was a T-34C, in which I have about a 120 hours from my military days. Unlike the T-34B, the T-34C is not available as a civilian aircraft so this must be from a Navy unit… most like Pax River. The turbo mentor used to be the aircraft used at NAS Whiting Field, and NAS Corpus Christi for primary flight training, but it has been replaced by the new T-6. Fleet military units still use it for aerial spotting and other misc tasks. Its way cheaper to fly and maintain than other fleet aircraft. Odd to see one at KDMW though. I didn’t investigate further… I have my own airplane to build… 

Back to my airplane. I have to determine how I’m going to run my pitot lines. I will definitely be doing a heated pitot tube with AOA, so really I have three runs to do. Wiring for the heat, AOA pressure, and pitot pressure. Currently I have the wire run and the pitot, but I’ll need a third spot for the AOA run. In the picture below from left to right you can see where I plan to run conduit for the wiring, and the pitot run. The tooling hole on the right will be used for AOA.   

My primary task for today was to dimple all the bottom skins.   

After dimpling, I attached the skins so that I could match drill the flap brace.    

I began, but didn’t finish, countersinking the flap brace. There are no instructions what to do here, but the best option is to countersink the middle piece so that the soft hinge material needs no dimple or countersink.   

Finally I cut the wing side of the hinges to length.