Front windshield install

I ran out of some of the wire I needed and it has been really nice out lately so I moved my work efforts back out into the garage.  I've been busy installing the windshield using the Silpruf method along the top and side edges and then using the traditional fiberglass fairing on the front.  I know I've mentioned it in the past but I really like the Silpruf method.  The install looks so darn professional!

I didn't add a bunch of pictures of the process since I have already documented that pretty completely.  Here is a picture of the windshield after the Silpruf install.

It looks like carbon fiber but its not.  This is several layers of regular fiberglass that has been tinted black.  This allows the inside view to be a consistent black trim all around the windshield.  

Right side with fiberglass layers.

After a little epoxy with micro balloons and some sanding... ok, lots of sanding.

Final sanding complete.  Now all I have to do is remove the orange tape and wait for paint day.

I moved the primary voltage regulator from behind the sub panel in the middle bay to this location.  I was looking in this access hole recently and realized I had the perfect location to install the voltage regulator right here.  Easy access for future maintenance.

CNC Panel work

I mentioned a while ago that I had upgraded my CNC a bit and one of the tasks I have been working on in the past week or so has been the design and cut of my instrument panel inserts.  I used carbon fiber on the 9A but since the frame is all carbon fiber I decided to try something new.  The inserts are .064 aluminum and rather than color them with paint or something I decided to try to go with the brushed aluminum look.  The idea is that I "brush" the aluminum to a consistent smooth sheen and then clear coat it for protection.  So far I like the results.

I also decided to try my hand at engraving with the CNC.  Theoretically it should work great but in practice it didn't start out so good as you will see in the pictures below.  Just for future reference the settings I used for the CNC are 6 IPM at .01 depth for the engraving.  The depth number was a bit arbitrary since its really hard to set it exactly.  What I ended up doing was to run the depth at .01 and then run the job a second time after lowering the Z0 setting by an appropriate amount to get the letter width I wanted.

This was my first real attempt at engraving.  As you can see the letters look horrible!  This was done at a speed of about 22 inches per minute.  Most of the literature I have read talks about engraving at much higher speeds so I thought I was being conservative.  After watching my little home built CNC jump and jiggle during this process I decided to slow it down to about 4 inches per minute.

This is what 4"/ minute looked like.  MUUUUCH better.  But notice that the top engraving is not as deep and in fact the lines disappear on the right side.  Well, my CNC was not perfectly flat nor was the aluminum panel held down consistently.  Next I went through a "leveling" process for my CNC bed, and then I paid a bit more attention to how the aluminum was held down to try to keep it consistent.  The next two pictures are the final result.  

Almost perfect (or at least as perfect as I can get it).  There are a couple of defects in this engraving but they were directly related to me missing a step when I changed out the router bit from an engraving bit to the cutting bit.  The process for cutting this type of panel is to first do the engraving, then change the bit and cut the interior cuts (holes and interior openings).  Finally I cut the exterior as the last step.  In this case I forgot to reset the Z axis depth when I changed out the bit and if you look closely at the Mixture hole you will see the result.  The CNC dutifully plunged into the aluminum and went all the way through.  The system is not rigid enough to take this type of torque and as such the X and Y axis' were skewed slightly.  The hole became slightly elongated and then the remaining cuts were just slightly off center from the engraving.  I ended up redoing this one as you can see in the picture below.

Much better. 

This is the one that I was most happy with.  The engraving looks professional and even the color fill process I went through to fill the engraving went well.  I followed up the color fill with a bit of brushing to see what the final look would be.  I'm pretty happy so far but the final verdict will occur after I do some clear coating of the brushed aluminum.

Just because the engraving was going so well I decided to put the pilot side panel back on the CNC and see if I could get the engraving done on it.  I'm very happy with how this came out!  I did add a little enamel color to the cuts but I will likely add a bit more as it doesn't show up as dark as I wanted it.

Wiring harness - Part 1

I finished up the tail feather work (mostly the fairings) and started on a few other tasks.  Mostly my time has been spent working on the wiring harness for the avionics.  This is one task I had done by SteinAir on the 9A and was looking forward to on the 10.  I've got waaaay too many hours in design and now the beginning of fabrication but so far I am enjoying the heck out of the project.

I started out by installing a few of the sub-panel parts as well as the VPX Pro and associated fuse panels.

Then I did a little measuring for lengths of wire runs.

A little more measuring..

A few photo's for connector orientation...

Then I took a piece of 1/4" plywood I had laying around and started laying out some wire runs.  I used Velcro loops and tape to get the basic layout.  Then I started with the power wires.  Here you can see most, but not all, power wires being run.

Here we are with most of the red power wires, most of the black ground wires, and a few of the white data runs.  Still no connectors and not even all of the data runs yet.

Tail feathers

Wow, has it really been almost a month?  With this covid thing it feels like time both flies and crawls depending on what I'm doing.  Since I'm still working from home (which means more than normal hours) I feel like I get less time to work on the 10.  Combine that with the annual inspection on the 9 and that leave precious little progress.  Oh well, I'm still making progress and its still a lot of fun!

So this past few weeks have been dedicated to working on the tail. Assembling the horizontal stabilizer, elevators, vertical stabilizer and the rudder and then finishing the fiberglass work that they all have is the theme of the past few weeks.

Drilling the hole that aligns and secures the elevators is critical and one area that is easily messed up.  I know a lot of people end up pulling the elevator back off, welding the hole closed, and then re-drilling.  I had to do that with the 9 because my elevators were not perfectly in sync.  With the 10 I decided to use my 3D printer to print up a perfectly sized block with the appropriate hole in the middle so that I could clamp the elevator horns together while drilling.  This worked out wonderfully!  You can see the 3D printed block with the bolt installed after drilling.

The horizontal stabilizer with the elevators installed.  It looked so cool I had to take a picture.

Drilling the horizontal stabilizer hold down bolts.  This is the bottom side.  You can see the castellated nut I used on the first one to hold it in place while I drilled the second hole (in between the two nuts)

My mask that I use when I go out in public.  In this picture I was in the waiting room as Mariah prepared for her surgery.

Rudder work complete including the fiberglass and the tail light/strobe mount installed.  

Elevators complete and ready for final assembly.  I have them stored above the garage door until its time to take them to the airport.

Horizontal stabilizer end end cap fiberglass complete!

Vertical Stabilizer fiberglass complete.

Right side horizontal stabilizer fiberglass complete.

This is the intersection fairing. These never seem to fit properly without lots of work.  This one wasn't too bad but you can see in this picture the gap that I had to fill/reshape.  

Perspective is odd but this is the front of the intersection fairing looking down.  A small gap here that had to be filled and shaped.

And here it is after a little work.  It fits nicely around the leading edge of the horizontal stabilizer as well as the leading edge of the vertical stabilizer.  The gap you see is because I don't have all holes filled with Cleco's.

Firewall titanium barrier

I finally got around to installing the titanium firewall barrier that I have been planning.  It was a bit of a chore for several reasons.

1. Titanium is hard to drill holes into...especially larger holes.  I ended up drilling smaller holes and then using a metal shaving bit in my Dremel tool to get them sized up properly.
2. I used spray adhesive to adhere both the 1/8" fiberfrax to the stainless steel firewall and then again to stick the titanium to the fiberfrax.  Worked out well except that when you put the two pieces together...they stay...no adjustments.  This caused me to have several slightly misaligned holes.  No big deal but I did have to go back and route the holes in the titanium out a bit to allow the bolts to go through.
3. Titanium foil is sharp!  No I didn't cut myself ...yet

When all was complete and I had installed most of the firewall mounted components everything looked good.  More importantly in the very unlikely event of a firewall forward fire I will have extra time to get the airplane on the ground before bad things happen.

In addition to the firewall work I also finished trimming up the windshield.  Its now ready to be glued in and then the leading edge fiberglass work completed.

I also spent a ton of time this past couple of weeks working on my wiring diagram.  I've been working on this thing for over two years now but its time to put all the details together into one main drawing.  I think I'm now ready to start fabricating the main avionics wiring harness.

Finally, a while back I had asked Geoff at Aerosport if he would use his nice 3D printer to print up a housing for my autopilot controller.  It came last week so I just had to put it in place to see how it looked.  I may make a few more edits to it before the final install.

One more topic I wanted to record in this blog.  The past few weeks have been rather unusual for me...and probably most of the rest of the world.  We have been dealing with the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Right now we have been under an order to remain home except for necessary trips to the grocery store or work if you are in a critical job that can not be done from home.  

Windshield trimmed and ready to be glued in place.

transferred my paper template to the bottom layer of fiberfax for cutting.

I used several pieces of paper all taped together to make a template of my firewall.  I then used this template to mark up both the fiberfrax and the titanium.  It actually worked out pretty good.

Fiberfrax just before it was glued to the firewall

All glued in place except the center recess.  

The final result!  Once the cowling mount flanges are installed I will come back and use the some Firebarrier 2000 to seal up any edges.

Here is a picture of the wiring diagram for this airplane.  Its rather large which makes it hard to see but if you click on the image you will get a better view.  Note that this is only the avionics wiring diagram.  The main power distribution, switches, lighting and assorted smaller systems are not included.

Autopilot controller in the mount that Aerosport printed up for me.  Its not bolted in yet but it fit nicely.

Side windows done

The side windows are done!  At least as far as I am going to take them for now.  As I mentioned earlier there will be some work after the airplane is painted.

I also installed the flap position indicator.  Turns out that was a bit of a challenge simply because I had to use a little geometry to figure out how long the "arm" that attaches to the flap rod needed to be to allow full travel of the flap motor to equal full travel of the 1.2" POS12 sensor.  Turns out that number is 3/8" from the surface of the tubing.  That's a lot less than I thought it would be.

Finally I installed a magnetometer shelf in the top of the tailcone.  This is a kit recently released by Van's and makes the process relatively simple.  It would have been much simpler if I had done it before I installed the top skin...

This is the POS12 flap position sensor mounted on the bulkhead.  The linkage goes down to a small 3/8" tab that is attached to the flap tubing using a simple Adel clamp.  This allowed me to set the angle properly.

Final window during the process of gluing it in place.

Right side windows installed.

I also installed the magnetometer mount in the tunnel overhead.  Originally I was going to install it in the wingtip but this location makes for a much shorter CAN buss run.

Forward top skin access panels

This is another of those informational posts.  Tonight I finished installing one of two forward top skin access panels.  I've found during my short 5 years of maintaining my 9A that easy maintenance is the key to successful maintenance.  For example I used quarter turn fasteners all the way around on my cowling including the horizontal split line.  I'm very glad I did that simply because those quarter turn fasteners are much easier to remove than the hings pins.  They don't look quite as clean but I really do like the looks of them. 

Along those lines Van's recently released a kit to install access panels in the forward top skin so that you can gain access to the most forward bay of the instrument panel.  While I don't have much for electronics in those bays I do have two voltage regulators, the GEA 24 engine monitor, and a bunch of wires that pass through to the engine compartment.  All of those items will require some sort of maintenance at some point.  So, I decided to purchase the new kit from Van's and rather than install it in the center bays of top skin, I installed it in the side bay.  This is where the majority of the access will be required and its much easier to reach into this area from a side access even if I have to reach over to the middle bay.

Below are a few pictures of the install process...

Using the tabs provided I clecoed the backing ring to the top of the skin and drew out the two openings to make sure everything would fit nicely. 

Here is the skin with the cutout completed and the backing ring cleco'd in place.

Now I'm getting ready to match drill the screw holes up to the proper size.

After a couple of hours of filing, dimpling, and riveting the backing ring is finally installed.  If you look through the hole you can see where my backup voltage regulator is installed.  Its now much easier to get access to that location.

Same hole but looking forward to where my firewall penetration for the wiring bundle will be.

And finally I screwed the cover in place.  I still need to trim the lower edge of the cover down a bit before paint but overall the kit fits well and I've spent about 4 hours working on an access panel that will provide me many hours of maintenance simplicity.