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.
Continued the fitting of the canopy with side skins by sanding more the left side and chamfering it.
Drilled the canopy sides
Fabricated C-791
Drilled the canopy frame sides, using C-791
Matched drilled C-791. We still have a gap up to 1/8 inch in the left and up 1/16 inch on the right.
Next time:
Check with Van about the gap on the side skins and take appropriate action
Redo the left C-660, as I am not happy with the front gap. The cutout is based on the dimensions on the drawing, and I was conservatively cutting, still I need to cut less!
I need to fabricate a spacer for the right C-791, back bottom, as 2 of the holes don’t have much edge distance.
We finish a few items from last time and started the canopy side skins:
Latch: Loosen the latch screw, so that the latch can rotate
Super track:
Drill the stifferning strips and instal them
Test: the canopy slides back and forth pretty well
Side skin:
fabricated c-660
match drilled the canopy frame using c-660
fabricated c-659
Matched drilled c-659
Fitted the side skin to the fuselage. There was interference with the left side of the canopy. There is also an issue with the aft hole of the right falling on the weld of the canopy frame
Sanded left side of canopy and testing again. There still a little bit of interference
Next week:
Sand the left side of the canopy again and recheck the fit of the side skins
Fix issue with aft hole interference with the weld according to Vans instructions
The fitting of the windshield was done by look, not much guidance from Vans, even after I called with them.
To adjust the height and transition from the windshield to the canopy, we needed to adjust the height of the canopy frame slightly, which got the top portion to match. Then to get the whole contour to match, we had to add washers between the roll bar and the windshield, as specified in the instructions.
The next items was to finish the attachement of the slider tracks. The slider tracks are attached via screws and nuts; however, there is no access from the bottom to fit any tools for the nuts, so we switched it to nut-plates. The alinement of the nut-plates is tricky.
Unfortunately, the latch hole ended up cracking, though I followed all instructions from Vans precisely. I drilled it to size and deburred it and sanded it thoroughly. Unfortunately, the hole size as specified by Van is too tight around the latch. After going through some cycles of cooling and heating through the week, it ended up cracking! I wish Vans asked for a slightly bigger size hole to avoid this.
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