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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!

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.

[photos/Picture 001.jpg] [photos/Picture 002.jpg] [photos/Picture 003.jpg] [photos/Picture 004.jpg]

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.

1. Completed deburring and riveting the aileron and flap gap seals for the right wing.

2. Drilled, deburred and dimpled the bottom wing skins for the right wing.

Clecoed on the bottom wing skins. however, i am confused by this nutplate hole pattern. not sure why the holes here do not align properly.

After installing the flaps on the fuselage, i decided to go back and finish more up on the wings.

1. Created the wing stands, finally, all out of spare wood lying around.

2. Started work on the flap and aileron gap seals.