Thursday, May 8, 2014

A little glassin' going on...

I found that I was missing a few pieces that I need to finish up some of the wiring that I was doing so after ordering what I need from Stein I moved on to a few smaller tasks that need to get done.  Oh, one thing I did that didn't get photographed is glassing in of the stall warning sensor hole that I cut into the leading edge of the wing long ago.  I decided that a stall warning horn was not the direction I wanted to go considering the new capabilities of AOA (Angle of Attack) instruments.  I still have some sanding and probably filling to do but at least there wont be a hole in the leading edge of the wing any longer.

First I finished up installing the Autopilot roll servo.  Its interesting to note that I have been following a thread on VansAirforce.com about a guy who had his servo arm over rotate and jam the aileron controls.  I am making sure that is not a possibility by installing the mechanical travel limiting bracket you see around the arm.  I haven't torqued these down yet because I still have some controls to install.

I decided long ago that I was going to do two things different.  First I plan on installing my wing tips with hinges instead of rivets or screws.  Second I will eventually install a small bullet camera in the top of the horizontal stabilizer.  I decided now is the time to make the first steps on both of those projects.  Here you can see where I used the hinge technique to install the VS fairing.  Actually the fairing/cap is not in the picture but you can see where I am using the bottom half of the hinge as the connection point to the VS.  The top half of the hinge is sitting on my work bench after having riveted and fiberglassed it to the fairing/cap.  No pictures of that yet.

Finally I moved on to the rudder cap.  Took a lot of cutting, sanding and filing but its getting close to fitting the way I want.  There is a significant gap in the middle that I need to deal with and I think I am just going to put a styrofoam "rib" inside to force the cap to fit correctly.  Then I am going to rivet it in place and probably fiberglass the surface to give it a nice smooth profile.