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Finally, the final paint of the overhead console. The first paint sample was perfect, a beigish color. Unfortunately, when I went to get the final paint, I got something a bit more yellow - big bird!

Oh well, will have to live with it now!

I also had to work out the transition between the overhead console and the baggage compartment. This turned out to be quite a headache. Ultimately, i decided to make another part like a fairing, that will just screw onto the overhead console and fill in the gap.

The cabin top was finally permanently attached. Used a flox and cabosil mixture to fill in the gaps. I wasn't sure about the right order of steps, but in retrospect, this should be the proper order.

I decided to apply a thin spread of proseal onto the rear part of the cabin area, where all the pop rivets go. This was just to ensure weatherproofing in this area. Plans didn't call for it.

1. Masked off all areas.

2. Lightly paint resin on all the mating parts. Let that dry for a slight bit.

3. I wasn't sure how effective buttering up the flox mixture onto mating surfaces would be. It might just end up making a mess. I did butter up mating surfacse a slight bit.

4. Position cabin top in place and run all of the #8 and #10 bolts and screws through both parts. Because the epoxy will run all into the threads and make running the nuts on difficult later, I installed all of the nuts.

I didn't tighten the nuts too much - just enough until I felt the first bit of resistance.

5. This is one of the last but most important steps that I did NOT do but wish I had. I actually already fitted my doors. I have not done the door guides, yet. I should have let the cabin top cure, with the door in position with the door guides in place. This way, I would ensure a better fitting cabin door frame to door.

Now in retrospect, I see that in one of the corners, the flox mixture may have allowed the door frame to narrow a slight bit. I will have to narrow the door guides i have in order to compensate for the slightly narrow door frames now.

A few photos of a carbon fiber panel.

More filling, sanding and smoothing.

This is probably the 2nd coat of epoxy primer and rage filler. Ready for another primer coat and another cycle.

Another one of those jobs, I decided to take another look at. I always regretted getting the SaveAir pitot mount over the Gretz. The Gretz mount is already pre-drilled with its mounting screw holes.

I had to drill all the holes in the Safeair mount. Of course, i was slightly off, causing the pitot to be at an angle.

I bit the bullet and decided to enlarge the #6 screw holes and reposition the nutplates. This time, I got it much much closer to alignment, which is perpendicular to the spar rivet holes.

Then I started looking at where I had put the pitot heat control box. It was 1 in from the most outboard rib. On the positive, the control wires can easily reach the pitot.

However, when the bottom skin is on, you have to reach across an entire bay to get to the control box. I thought why not just mount the control box on the outboard rib. The main sacrifice is having to extend the wiring to the pitot.

Also, I ran all the pitot lines with enough slack, to allow me to remove the pitot and disconnect the static and aoa lines. However, the stock wiring, would not allow you to disconnect the wiring. They had to be extended anyway.

Yet to do, make those wire extensions.

I asked Dynon if they have an extension wire already available, and they replied no and to check Digikey for the connector.

I'll probably just splice the wires instead.

One of the things I dislike most about my build, is when i leave things uncompleted for some reason. I realized now that the stall warning wiring had not yet been done, even though my fuel tanks were already attached.

This means I have to do all of the stall warning work through the wing access panel, instead of having access to it from the side where the fuel tank is now.

The stall warning vane was mostly already there. I tightened up some of the screws.

As far as the wiring goes, I spent much too much time deciding how to secure the wiring. The quickest solution would be to use one of the adhesive tie mounts. However, I have heard those mounts fall off after a while, mostly due to temperature. Since I will hardly access this area, i decided to use another method.

I drilled a #30 hole around the lightening hole and ran a tie wrap through it to hold the wiring.

Then for the tie wrap near the stall warning vane, I wrapped it in this rubber self fusing tape. This gave the tie wrap something to hold on to and will keep the wiring from moving around so much.

I am getting closer. It has been over 13 months since my last update to this section. That is scary!

After much debate on conduit, I decided to just go overboard and add 4 conduit tubes to each side. There is easily enough room to add them, and if they remain empty and unused, so be it. I have no clue how many will be used or allocated.

I also discovered that the access holes for the step bolt, are located directly behind the permanently riveted access covers on both left and right sides. Thus, I decided to make these access covers removeable by installing nutplates. This was a major time waster, unfortunately. However, my goal is to complete the baggage floor areas, so i can move on and get to attaching the canopy top some day.

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I did not do a good job keeping up with updates in this section. It probably spanned a good year. However, the baggage door came out reasonably well, after a lot of careful thought.

I did deviate from plans and replaced riveting the hinge to the airframe structure with nutplates and #6 screws.

There was one thing I wish I could do over again. If you look very very carefully at the door hinge, the hinge sticks away from the skin at the top of the hinge, more than at the bottom. This came about, when first drilling the hinge rivet holes into the door frame. You HAVE to be extremely careful and exact here. Doing it by eye was clearly not smart.

Small variations here create a much large effect. Anyway, it came out okay in the end and is only slightly noticeable. The door now has a tendency to swing open, but that is not a bad side-effect.

The door lock i got from Home Depot. The Van's door latch was too thick for the lock i got, so I had to modify the one that came with the lock.

I ended up redoing the strut bracket. The first attempt, i tried to level the bottom of the strut bracket, as was depicted in the plans. The bracket does fit nicely around the door frame this way. However, the problem is that the bolt for the strut interferes with the door frame. The plans have you notching the door frame to allow everything to fit.

I ended up having to notch so much of the bracket, that I had to create 2 parallel notches for the bracket almost to the bottom of the rain gutter in the door frame. Rain would inevitably leak through those notches, at some point way way way in the future.

Thus, I elected to fill those notches up, fill in the bolt holes as well, and realign the bracket, redrill and renotch. This meant moving the bracket futher outboard and slightly up. You want to make sure not to move the bracket TOO far up, or it will interfere with the bolts holding the door hinge to the door when the door is closed, as is shown below in the photos.

Unfortunately, I couldn't open both doors at the same time for the last photo.

The first batch of micro i ever made, had much too much resin and was much too wet. I probably added 4 pumps (not sure in ounces) of resin, which basically made at least a pint of micro slurry in volume. You end up adding at least twice as much micro as you think you initially need.

However, in my case, it still wasn't enough. When applying the micro, it would definitely self-level off a bit and create a glossy texture. In a way, it made it easier to apply, since it levelled itself. However, I expected this micro to be about as hard to sand as you would want.

When creating another batch of micro, i decided to make some very dry and some about in the middle to wet.

The problem with dry dry micro, is that it is hard to apply. it will not stick well to a dry surface. i suppose i could wet out the surface first, but i'm lazy, i guess.

The wet slurry was definitely easier to apply. Stuck well to the surface and was fairly easy to smear with my finger, even. Along the many contours of the door posts, using my fingers was the tool of choice.

Now I have to wait a day to find out how each one sands.

I decided to take a break from working on the doors by starting on the empennage attach. I got as far as temporarily laying the horizontal stabilizer and vertical stabilizer on the tail cone, just to see what it looks like. I also took plenty of pictures.

I think i want to do the actual work some time later, when i can take over the entire garage for at least a month or so. In addition to the empennage attach, i can also work on the fairing tips and such.

I started the "final" fitting of the doors. This involved basically drawing a line around the entire door about 1/16th to 1/8th inch in to just trim off slight bits.

The main problem is that you do not know how much to trim, until you have trimmed too far. Thus, i figured it is better to take off small increments than to try to do it all at once.

I reached a point where the door edge no longer was the binding point. The door frame now needed trimming because it was touching the inside door shell. Thus, I shifted to drawing lines on the door frame for sanding down, to approx. a 1/8th gap.

The pictures below show my favorite tool and the most used, besides the drill. I have been able to cut almost anything and now i am sanding using the same tool. I have the craftsman clone of the rotozip, but i may buy a rotozip to have a spare around. That way I do not have to swap out tool heads as much.

Glued up the pilot side door. Because the door fit worse than the right door, I used about 13 fl oz of the epoxy/cabosil mix instead of 10 last time. Hopefully, the excess will be put to good use to fill in all the gaps.

I continued to trim the right door bit by bit. The fit is definitely getting closer. I decided to stop here and think a bit more about how i want the final fit to work out.

Van's service bulletin announcement can be downloaded here: sb08-6-1.pdf

It took roughly 8 hours to complete. There were quite a few rivets to remove. The trickiest part is just making sure to cleanly remove the rivets without "overly" oversizing the hole. I used a mirror, a light in the tail cone, and plenty of patience, were on order for the day.

SB 08-6-01 Photos

For some reason, my pilot's side door is a lighter shade of pink than the passenger side door. The passenger door is in much better shape. The flanges on the pilot's door have holes and divots and does not maintain a clean line. The passenger door is much much better in this respect.

Also, in this first picture, you can see that the outer shell had its tab completely cut off. The tab is in absolutely the wrong location!

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Well, this is my first post in probably 5 months. unbelievable. however, on May 20th, i broke the 4th metacarpal bone in my hand while windsurfing - a spiral fracture into 4 pieces.. i had surgery a week later. instead of putting hardware on my plane, i am having hardware put into my hand - 2 screws and a plate.

as best as i can tell, i just crashed into water and just held onto the boom too tight. break wasn't caused by an impact on the hand.

thus, now, i am enduring physical therapy to get utility from my hand again, instead of being just a hook. it looks like the airplane will continue to wait longer.

Match: #11 Message: #9098 Date: Mar 10, 1996 From: "Robert L. Nuckolls, III" <72770.552(at)compuserve.com> Subject: Re: Ground Bus and Other Grounding Issues

>An excellent source for a ground bus is B&C Specialty Products (316)283-8000. >They have one that uses PIDG spade terminal connections. >Stan Blanton >RV-6 Fuselage skeleton While the topic of grounding is up . . . I thought I would share some words with RV-LIST which are currently being incorporated into the 6th edition of the 'Connection. Some salient points to ponder . . .

1. The most important wire in your airplane runs from battery (-) to crankcase. In all but rotax powered airplanes this should be a 2AWG (oh well, you RVers with 12" ground leads can get by with a 4AWG . . . BUT NO SMALLER. There are a number of reasons for this which I won't elaborate on here . . . you'll have to get details by reading the book!

2. The next wire to go in runs from crankcase to firewall. This wire is alternator and/or systems load sized, 4AWG for 60 amp alternators, 6 AWG for 40 amp machines.

3. If your airplane is tractor type, the next items to install are B&C ground buses on both sides of firewall. A 48-pin device on cabin side, a 24-pin device on firewall side. Both them back to back with 5/16" BRASS hardware. The firewall to crankcase lead should go to the 5/16" thru-stud. Install the stud with just ground busses and locktite under the first nut. Put the firewall to crankcase jumper under a second nut with an internal tooth lockwasher.

4. Now, if you're building an RV, your ground SYSTEM is done. Only remotely located components like light fixtures at tips, strobe supplies under seat, etc . . . are grounded locally (right next to where they mount). All goodies behind panel should get their own ground wire to the ground bus . . . don't daisy-chain a number of components onto the same ground wire. All goodies under the cowl, except for those which achieve ground by virtue of it's enclosure being mounted to metal, get their own ground lead to the forward firewall ground bus.

5. Special Cases: All headset and microphone jacks should be INSULATED from local ground with fiber washers or fabrication of non-conducting mounting brackets. All unbalanced antennas (comm monopole, Archer's wing-tip vor antennas, etc) must get good local ground. All balanced antennas (g.s. dipoles, vor dipoles in canards, Archer's gamma-matched dipoles, etc) generally require no local ground and may cause problems if they ARE locally grounded. Check with manufacturer but in any case, leaving it ungrounded is generally the best thing to do FIRST. Canard pusher aircraft with battery mid-ships or forward will have an engine side firewall ground bus as above but no cabin side ground bus. These aircraft need a 48-point ground block behind the panel attached to battery (-) with 4AWG wire.

In a nutshell, the techniques described will save you a lot of fuss and all but guarantee a noise free, voltage stable electrical system.

Bob

. . . AeroElectric Connection

On this New Year's Eve 2007, I did some more cabin top trimming. yeah!

1. Trimmed the far aft edge, against the tailcone top skin. I took a bit off here and the fit looks very good. I was afraid the cabin top was not flush with the tailcone top skin, but after clecoing everything in, everything was pulled flush.

2. Trimmed the windshield area. I had no scribe lines to go by and had to do this more or less by feel. I think I did a pretty good job. The only thing I could have done better was to accommodate the curvature of the forward skin in this area. I trimmed more or less in a plane for the tangent of the curve, so there is a gap to the skin away from the tangent point. It is a minor point. The results look better than I could have expected, i think.

I finally reordered the aileron control tubes and redid them. This time I did a MUCH better job. This is what i learned:

1. Everything up to the point of primering the insides of the tubes is pretty straight-forward. I still can't seem to drill straight with the drill-press - did my best.

2. Primering. The best technique was as follows:

a. Heating up the control tube to get the fittings off of each end is a must sometimes.

b. After deburring holes, clean by soaking a paper towel in acetone and pushing thru the tube with a dowel.

c. Put one fitting on one end. This will be the cap for this end of the tube.

d. Tape over all the drilled holes, so that paint won't leak all over the place.

e. Pour paint into the other end, liberally. Cover end with just a paper towel and swirl the paint around for even coverage.

f. Then just pour the left over paint.

g. Also, it's good to get this set up ahead of time. Hang the tube with open end down, so the rest of the paint can dribble out the end into a cup or whatever.

Trimmed the doorway. It almost fits. I still need to trim the doorway bottom ledge, so the cabin top can fit down more snug.

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Finally, after about 1 year, i finished the fuel tanks.

1. Installed the Fuel Guardian.

Verified that the sensors worked by testing in water. Decided against installing a baffle. instead, Rich mentioned possibly changing the code to add a delay to the warning signal.

2. Prosealed the rear baffle.

Made sure to add as much proseal as i dared. In retrospect, I could have added even more proseal in the corners.

3. Pop-riveted the z-brackets.

4. Leak tested using a bike pump and balloons. However, the balloons never held air because of leaks around the fuel cap. I sprayed soapy water as an extra measure to confirm there are no leaks.

Finally, I enter the Gates of Fiberglass Hell.

Actually, it wasn't as bad as i was expecting. Yes, there is fiberglass dust, but not any more than aluminum dust.

I measured 0.75" on each flange and cut to that line.

I ended up using a tungsten carbide jigsaw blade in a jigsaw to make the initial cuts.

After some debate, i decided to stick to the Van's plans for the battery cable firewall passthru - basically a SB500 bushing.

I did also wrap the cable around the braided wire wrap, which is pretty tough in itself.

Later, I will also use some kind of sealant to seal out gases and to prevent vibration.

Cut all the tubes and primed them inside and out.

At first, i could not find the steel aileron collar tubes. I thought i was missing them and even asked for it to be resent by Van's. However, i was looking for a powder coated part, when in fact, it's raw steel. It was actually used as a hinge holder when shipped, which made me think it was just scrap and not a real part. Also, it was not even labelled.

Priming the torque collars was best done by pouring some primer into a ziploc freezer bag, then dunking the tube into the bag.

I screwed up the aileron control tubes. Instead of measuring for 21 11/32, I measured them to 21 11/16, accidentally. Crap. Screwed - need to redo it later. For now, I cut these down to the right size and just temporarily fit the fittings on for now.

A GREAT tip for fitting the fittings onto the ends, is to use a heat gun to heat up the tube to expand the metal. Makes inserting fittings into the ends, even with primer, easy.

Second safety wire job, ever.

My first safety wire job.

1. Bought this strobe kit from Russ Daves.

2. Confirmed it works fine. Had to convert an old computer power supply to supply a 12v supply for testing.

1. Final riveted the outboard most rib. Left this undone so that installing the Duckworks mounting bracket would be slightly easier.

2. Installed the Duckworks lights.

Drilled and installed the nutplates onto the ribs.

Created the mounting brackets for the lights to span the 15.5" span between the outer 2 ribs.

Cutout the hole for the lights. Used a jigsaw. Then sanded down with a 1" drum sander. My first use of it, and i love it.