We tried fitting the side skirt again, by creating a bend to get a better bit. The fit on the side looked better. However, the bend will made the fit for the back skirt worse. So, we decided to go with fiber glass for both side and back skirts. We needed to prep and purchase a few thing for the fiber glass work. So we moved to the tail.
Rudder connector:
We finish the last connector. Nw to remove the rudder, we have easy access to the light connector, without needing to remove the fairing. We still need to add some epoxy to the connector, fr water isolation.
Fairing:
We sanded the right and left fairing. Now we have a good 1/8inch between the elevator and rudder. We decided this time to fill it with micro-balloons, as it is hard to get the fiber glass tight without vacuum, which leads to less distance between the elevator and horizontal stabilizer. With micro-balloons, we should be able to keep the 1/8 distance. To work with micro-balloons, we decided that we need respirators!
Engine mount:
We tested the engine mount but we did not have a 3/16inch drill bit
Sanded the vert stab fairing and get the 3/16inch clearance. 1/8 clearance is needed and 1/16inch was added t accommodate for the fiber glass skin I need to add to seal, now that I removed the previous one.
Sanded the elevator fairing to get 1/8inch clearance. More sanding is needed.
Created a new connection for the rudder light, so that we do not need to remove the rudder fairing when we remove the rudder. Unfortunately, on of the pins of the molex broke by the end and needs to be redone.
Next time:
Finish sanding the elevator fairing.
Seal all the fairing with fiber glass
Finish the rudder molex connector.
Redo C-791 and canopy skirt fitting
Redo the left C-660
Feb 20th 2023, 6h
Canopy Side skins
After a bunch of discussion with Vans and reading, it looks like we do not want 1/8inch gap between the canopy and the side skirts, as this will lead to drift of air in the cabin, with a small chance of carbon monoxide coming in.
One item we can try to fox the gap is to bend the canopy skirt and to try again by redoing C-791. So, I ordered the new parts.
As well, we can try to add a rubber piece between the rail and the side skirt, to form a seal, though there is still some question marks about the back portion after the rail ends. Some notes on this:
Given that trying this again requires waiting for parts and requires one more person, I move back to the rudder fitting.
Rudder Attachement
The issue at hand is that we do not have enough distance between the vert stab fairing and rudder for rotation, when the middle bearing has full engagement. We tried acquiring a longer bearing, but it looks like it will need to be a specialized part which will be high cost for order just one. So, we will need to fix the issue with the bearings available at Vans. Given that full engagement of all bearing is a must, I needed to double check that we have full engagement for all bearing. The middle one did not have it. So, I had to redo all fairing engagements, as a result. The middle one currently has minimum engagement, which is 8 180 deg rotations, the other 2 have lot of room for change in all direction. I fitted the rudder back to the vert stab. Next, I need to sand the vert stab fairing.
Another issue is that our bearing are pretty beating up after many trials, I did a little research and found a handy tool to instal our fairings, gator socket, so I ordered one, and I ordered new hardware.
We need to have minimal 1/8inch clearance between the vert stab fairing and the rudder.
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