22 – Firewall & Electrical

Posted on 29 October, 2016 by Airdog

Today was another light build day since I went to a Fall Fun Festival with some friends. I did get a bit done, starting off with some of what I worked a little bit on yesterday, then finished up quite a bit today: my “Triparagon”. Or, basically the big motherboard for the vast majority of all my electrical system components: busses, grounding blocks, etc.

Since I now know exactly how my canard controls fit into the forward fuselage/nose, I was able to tweak the size & dimensions of the vertical Triparagon plate. I recut another fresh, updated cardboard mockup and then set about figuring out the placement of my electrical components. I’m extremely pleased with the fact that I’ll easily fit virtually my ENTIRE electrical system on this one plate. And the only reason I say “virtually” is due to any future potentiality that I may have a component that doesn’t fit on the Triparagon, but currently EVERY piece of the electrical system fits on it!

I then spent a good half hour between removing the peel ply off the firewall front face 1-ply BID layup and then razor trimming the edges. The firewall looks good and is very close to getting mounted. I do have to do some minor sanding along the edges and a couple places on the front face, and quite a bit on the aft side since I didn’t peel ply it for some odd reason (that was back in 2011, so my memory is foggy on why I didn’t peel ply it! . . . )

I then spent another good 45 minutes looking at the configuration of stuff on my D-Deck area. The 1/2″ square 6061T6 bar that you see will traverse across the fop front side of the CS spar, attached at the front corners of the top engine mount extrusions. Yes, this is a modification of the GIB seatbelt mounts and is NOT per plans. This bar will be mounted with the AN4 1/4″ extrusion bolt on each end (with 2024 inserts inside each of the bar for strength) and also have center mount countersunk screws to keep it secure. That will allow the GIB to simply slide the upper seat belt shoulder straps inboard or outboard for comfort. I weighed all these components, and this modification is within an ounce (probably less) weight-wise as the plans configuration.

The black GIB headrest and components shroud cardboard mockup (that I made in Germany) is a modification I’m doing ala Wayne Blackler (see second below). I like this configuration INFINITELY better than the plans shroud that has the GIB with their essentially in coffin or something…. Blech! With my GIB upper seatbelt bar mod I did have to trim the depth by about 3/4″, but it still looks as if everything I had planned to get mounted inside the headrest will still fit comfortably.

Wayne’s GIB headrest and component housing:

The next couple of days I have an out of town visitor coming in, so between football, cooking out, visiting, beer drinking, etc. not a whole lot of work will get done. Plus, I’ll be prepping to get back into my flying lessons which start this Wednesday. Of course I’ll still be working on the build, but it will be significantly less with all the flying I’ll be doing!

Chapter 4 & 14 – Extrusion & Firewall

Posted on 28 October, 2016 by Airdog

Today was kind of a slow build day, but I did get a couple of things knocked off the list.

The first thing was I drilled the 1/4″ holes into the vertical leg of the upper right engine mount extrusion & through the longeron.

I then test fitted a couple of AN4 bolts in the holes. Nice & snug and the holes look good.

I then backtracked to finish a step in Chapter 4 that is about 5 years late in the making: glassing the front face of the firewall with 1 ply of BID. I had held off initially to wait to see if I needed to added any screws, etc. and just never got around to glassing it.

I used the firewall as a template to mark & cut the BID at a 45° bias.

I then took the firewall outside and sanded it down with a DA sander to prep it for glass.

I set the BID in place on the firewall then pulled it down and wet out just the top side of the firewall face.

Then I set the BID in place on the top side of the firewall, rolled the BID up towards the top and wetted out the bottom of the firewall face with epoxy.

I then wet out the entire BID on the firewall face.

With the BID wetted out on the face of the firewall, I then peel plied the entire layup.

Tomorrow I’ll pull the peel ply and clean up this layup. I’ll also work some more on the upper engine mount extrusions to get them bolted in place, and then prep for glassing in the lower engine mount extrusions. Once I finish with the engine mount & extrusions, I’ll be back working on the wheel pants again.

Chapter 14/23 – The Mount

Posted on 27 October, 2016 by Airdog

First off, as per plans I let this the engine mount extrusions cure until late afternoon to ensure a complete curing of the layup.

I then cleaned up all the excess glass with the Fein saw and really gave both side layups a good sanding.

One reason I went with 4130 steel on the left side extrusion is that I wanted a higher strength extrusion than stock due to a much heavier and more powerful engine. But I also wanted a low profile extrusion on the left side, since that’s where the passenger enters. I understand it’s back on the spar and out of the way, but I did want no more than an inch high extrusion on the left side.

On the right however, where the canopy is, the extrusion is 1.25″ high. The base leg is even wider at 1.5″ wide. The upper right extrusion is of course 2024 Aluminum. I pretty much left the thick pad of glass that I laid up between the right side extrusion upright and the longeron at the same 1.25″ height as the vertical extrusion leg, but I did taper it down into the longeron surface. Still, the glass under both these upper extrusions is thick, stout & strong!

I then cut the pass through holes on the firewall for the engine mount extrusions. I figured I would have to open up those pass through holes a bit, but it was really tough getting the firewall on. And although I checked the lower longerons to see if anything was messing up the re-mounting of the firewall, I couldn’t see anything.

I opened up the holes based on what I thought was some binding, but I was bamboozled by the firewall in that the real problem was at the bottom, not the top. Since the bottom longerons (or stringers) curve upward, then a bit more needs to be removed from their mounting holes to install the firewall with a straight in motion.

The next issue I encountered was the right engine mount extrusion 1.6″ bottom reinforcement & connecting plate. Since it matches the 1.5″ width of the upper right side extrusion, and due to the slight angle that the extrusion is mounted to the longeron at, I simply just could not get the screws mounted into it because it kept hitting the firewall. Obviously, this clearance issue will only get worse when the Fiberfrax and Stainless steel final cover is added to the firewall.

So I marked a slight angle on the forward side of the 1/8″ reinforcement plate (it’s still attached to the outer angle that the engine mount tube is attached to).

I then trimmed the edge using the Dremel Tool (and a face mask of course!).

I then was able to get the upper engine mount extrusion assemblies installed, and then clamped the engine mount in place.

By trimming the top engine mount posts by 0.32″ I am now able to easily attain the 134.2 fuselage station at the top aft engine mount ring. I added a pic of the engine mount post so one can get an idea of how it will look bolted in place.

I then focused on the lower engine mount posts for a bit.

The extrusion pass through holes needed to be modified just a bit, so I marked them up.

After mocking up the fuselage, it was clear that the lower engine mount posts were going to need a trim as well. There’s no room for them and currently they would have to stick into the firewall for the bottom engine mount rings to be at FS 134.45. I knew I was going to have to shave another 0.3″ off of each one.

I pulled out my Harbor Freight “Dremel” tool and realized the cutting wheel was pretty small and needed to be replaced. Well, not wanting to waste it, I decided to cut some fairly thin tubing by lopping off the offending inboard rudder pedal tubes from each rudder pedal.

The Dremel made short order of the offending rudder pedal cross bar.

I then remounted the rudder pedal. You can see how way much more room I have with that inboard part of the cross-tube gone!

I then removed what was left of the small cutoff wheel and replaced it with a brand new one. Then I got to work trimming 0.3″ off of each lower engine mount post.

Here’s a shot with the engine mount post trimmed to length (minus 0.3″).

I set aside the trimmed engine mount & marked up the upper engine mount extrusions to be drilled in order to receive 1/4″ AN4 bolts. Below is the right side with its drill bit holes marked.

I then did the same for the left side.

And here’s a shot of both sides . . . Ok, ready to drill!

I started drilling the right extrusion first. Of course drilling straight down on these holes doesn’t present any real challenges . . .

But Boy, drilling the side holes sure do! I used a flexible drill shaft that I picked up from Home Depot a while back specifically for this purpose.

I focused on the left side 4130 engine mount extrusion because if anything is going to tear up my drill bits, it will be this hard tough stuff (although its not anything near as bad as stainless steel!)

I rounded up some AN4 bolts and fit-checked the bolt holes. Nice and snug!

It got pretty late, so I needed to stop drilling for the evening, but here’s a shot of both sides with the their one bolt each installed.

Finally, here are a couple pics off the top “ceiling” of the interior CS spar showing the nuts and large washers holding the bolts in the extrusions in place. I am happy that my Spruce hardpoints embedded in the CS spar are in the right spot and that I’m hitting them with my bolts!

Tomrrow I’ll continue to work on the engine mount, the extrusions and the firewall, and of course I’ll continue to post my progress here. Either tomorrow –or very shortly thereafter– or the next day I’d like to have the engine mount, et al, in the bag in order to move back onto the wheel pants.

Chapter 14/23 – Engine Mount

Posted on 26 October, 2016 by Airdog

I started off today with something I was curious about, and that had nothing to do with the engine mount. I really just wanted to see where a good location was for the fuel pump, and in relation to the fuel valve. I played around with a few different locations, stopped at this one since I really like that the pump can be mounted vertically here, thus driving as much of the pump weight forward as practically possible. It also gives some nice space to the fuel valve.

I then moved on to measuring the top engine mount posts to take 0.32″ off the end of each side.

Here is one of the posts after I trimmed it 0.32″.

I then started marking up the firewall to cut the slots so each engine mount extrusion could transit the firewall.

Here’s a shot with both upper and lower engine mount extrusion slots shown marked for cutting.

I started each extrusion slot by drilling a few 1/8″ holes for the top extrusion slots and 3/16″ holes for the bottom extrusion pass-through slots. I then transitioned to using a saber saw to finish cutting the holes.

After finishing each hole with the saber saw, I then sanded down the pass throughs with 32 grit paper.

Here’s a shot of the firewall mounted with all the engine mount extrusions pass-through slots cut.

I then set the engine mount extrusions in place to see how they looked & fit.

Here’s a closer shot of the engine mount extrusions.

I then tested out my trimmed engine mount by clamping it in place on the upper engine mount extrusions.

Again, here’s a closeup shot of the upper right extrusion.

Ahh, trimming the top engine mount posts did the trick. Now I can dial in the upper engine mount rings to FS 134.2 as per plans.

I then pulled the firewall off and mocked up just the upper engine mount extrusions before I glassed them in place.

After verifying that the extrusion spacing was good, I then went to town sanding the areas that will get glass during the mounting of the engine mount extrusions.

I then vacuumed up all the sanding dust.

I have to say that this is quite a detailed layup. The time lapse between the pic above and below is over 4 hours. Regardless, here are a couple of shots with the upper engine mounts glassed & floxed into place.

And a shot from the aft side , , ,

I then verified that the left side extrusion’s firewall alignment mark was good, which it wasn’t. So I spent a few minutes tweaking both side, then once I got them straight, I snapped this shot. The line at the top equates to the forward side of the firewall, while the bottom line equates to the aft side of the firewall… Thuss why I paid so much attention to getting these marks aligned properly.

Here’s the right side extrusion firewall alignment mark. Due to the angle of the camera, the extrusion and the spar, it looks a bit off.

But if you look at it from this angle, it’s spot on.

Wth my upper ending mounts aligned properly, I then wanted to better align the bottom engine mount rings. You’ll note in the pic of the plans below, the upper engine mount ring ends at FS 134.2, while the bottom engine mount ring ends at FS 134.45… 1/4″ aft of the upper engine mount ring.

I used my level and a 1/4″ block of aluminum to check the lower engine mount rings for the proper fuselage station. They were just a bit aft on the bottom side, but a slight push forward got them to the proper fuselage station.

I strapped the bottom of the engine mount to the center of the landing gear to create just a slight bit of pressure, which got the lower engine mount rings to the correct fuselage station. Since the epoxy will still a bit pliable and not cured yet (I used slow hardener for this layup), this should set up the correct fuselage stations for the top & bottom of the engine mount. At a minimum, it will get the engine mount rings very close to the required FS settings so as to minimize stress when the mount gets bolted into place.

Here’s a shot of the aft end of the fuselage with the engine mount being used to ensure the upper engine mount extrusions are set in their correct positions.

Tomorrow I’ll clean up this layup and then continue to press on to get the engine mount ready for install. I’m not sure if I’ll tackle the lower extrusions yet since I’ll have to assess the pros & cons of flipping the fuselage or using Cab-O-Sil and simply working the layups upside down.

Chapter 14/23 – An Enigma . . .

Posted on 25 October, 2016 by Airdog

Before I get to the “enigma” part of this story, I wanted to show you one piece of what Marco & I were into last night. We started off out in the shop and of course had a myriad of discussions on all things Long-EZ. He brought some Long-EZ seat cushions he has and we tried them out both in the front & back seat. This visit is the first time Marco has sat in my fuselage, and he did note the difference in feel between my 1.4″ wider cockpit vs. his stock flying plane (he widened his build Long-EZ fuselage 2″).

The more exciting part of his visit is that right before we went to dinner I hooked up a 12v battery to charge while we were out. Then, when we returned, we fired up the GRT Mini-X EFIS for the first time ever. Marco was curious to see how it looked and requested that we take a look, so we messed around with the screens, menus, features, etc. for a good while. We didn’t take any pics last night, but below is some of what we saw with just power and the GPS antenna hooked up to the Mini-X.

Primary Flight Display (PFD):

Navigation Maps (Track up & North up):

HSI:

Today I started out by lifting the fuselage nose to get the longerons to a level 0°.

Longerons at a level 0°.

I then checked the firewall and it was dialed right in at 90°, perpendicular to the longerons.

I calculated the thickness of the firewall (since I haven’t glassed on all the BID yet) at 0.355″ and simply rounded that up to 0.36″ and added it to the 1.6″ for the part of the engine mount extrusion sticking out aft of the firewall for the engine mount to attach to.

After removing the firewall, I mocked up the engine mount extrusions (remember, the top ones are a mixture of 4130 steel on the left side and 2024 aluminum on the right) and then checked the WA16 Spruce wedge spacers. Since my fuselage is just slightly more curved, I cut the WA16s 0.4″ at their widest point vs the stock 0.3″. This of course turned out to be a wasted effort since even though the fuselage is more football shaped than stock, the plans 0.3″ wide wedge spacer dimension is still the correct size. Ahhh, so I did even more cutting and sanding to get these things thinned down.

I then clamped and set the engine mount into place, only attached to the upper engine mounts for the initial look.

This is where the ENIGMA part comes into play. I have no idea why, since I thought I was Uber diligent in my measuring of all fuselage dimensions at the beginning of this build, but the face of my firewall is setting at about FS 125.4 vs the plan’s FS 125.0. I have to admit I was remiss in double-checking the firewall dimensions when I installed the CS spar into the fuselage, since I assumed that my spar notches were good due to the fact that I did re-check their measurements. Plus, the firewall fit flush and appeared aligned, which it is . . . just 0.4″ aft where the face of it should be.

The real affect, although over-comeable, is that the top set of engine mount brackets are setting at FS 134.5 vs FS 134.2. 0.3″ may not seem significant, but it certainly is to the W&B when you’re talking about the mounting of the 250+ pound engine, the heaviest component on this entire craft.

My initial concern was that if I simply move the mount closer (which will require some trimming of the upper engine mount stems) that it would negatively effect the clearance of the forward-mounted engine components. But since I’m using Electronic Ignitions in both magneto mounts, they won’t require the forward space that Slick mags do. Thus, if I trim a hair over 0.3″, and mount the engine with it’s normal engine mount stem to firewall spacing, I should be very close to spot on with the FS 134.2 engine mount setting.

[BTW, the measurement below was taken from the face of F28… so, 28 + 106.5 = 134.5].

This shows the gap between the end of the right longeron and the upper right engine mount stem. Note that if the engine mount stem were left at the length in the pic below, it would actually be embedded into the firewall. The aft face of the firewall will be just forward of the double horizontal extrusion plate shown just underneath the engine mount stem.

Tomorrow I’ll actually trim the engine mount (too late tonight due to noise) and continue to work the engine mount extrusions. I do plan on getting the layups & upper engine mounts in tomorrow. Also, as you can see –at least for the time being– I’m pretty much done with Chapter 16, Controls. Finally, there’s some important info concerning my upcoming build schedule in the project update post.

Chapter 17/22 – All Electric…

Posted on 21 October, 2016 by Airdog

This morning I had to run over to get a new muffler on my truck, which ended up taking half the day. I went to a cafe and had some coffee while I waited for the truck to get finished, and while there I made up my to-do task sheet for the day. Unfortunately, I only got the first 2 items on the list done, each of course taking a bit longer than I had anticipated. By the time early evening rolled around, I punted and simply went to dinner & a movie with a buddy of mine, so not a lot done on the actual build of the plane today.

My first task was to prep the connection wiring and replace the connector on the Trio Pro Pilot roll trim servo somewhat like I had done with the pitch servo. The main difference here though is that the roll servo will reside in the engine compartment, not the cockpit, and thus will be subjected to higher temps and more of the elements. I wanted to completely protect this wiring and replace the Molex connector with an AMP CPC connector.

I started by removing the Molex connector.

And then removed the 4 individual Molex connector pins.

I added a couple of pieces of heat shrink, a flexible wire stay, and crimped 4 new AMP pins onto each of the wires. Technically, in the same way that as the pitch servo, there are 2 ground wires that share the ground pin connector: one to the internal electronics, and one for the case ground.

As you can see, I also crimped a ring terminal in place for the case ground wire. In addition, I snapped each AMP pin into the AMP CPC connector housing and closed it all up.

And a closer shot of the final AMP CPC connector configuration for the Trio Pro Pilot roll servo.

My second (and final) electrical-related task of the day was to terminate the 24AWG wires coming out of the RAC servo that I’m using in my roll trim system. I decided to try a little trick that Bob Nuckolls has for modifying a DB9 connector to use as an inline type connector.

Below you can see I’ve already removed the metal housing from the female side of the DB9 connector.

I then had to remove the tabs from the male side, but this being my first time making one of these I removed a bit too much of the flange, so when resoldering the sides back together I had to try to bridge the gap, which if you’ve used solder you know it’s not a good gap filler or bridging material. I later cleaned off some of this excess solder but pressed on after I took this pic to get this thing completed.

I guess I should have taken an interim pic of the individually terminated wires with the D-sub pins, but here’s the final connector after I added some E6000 adhesive for essentially a potting material & strain relief on the back side of the connector.

The female side of the connector will get D-sub sockets terminated onto the wires and with the wires terminated, all of this will get heat-shrinked together to complete the final connection of the 2 connector halves.

For what is essentially a 4-pin connector I’m not really sure if I’d use one of these again. I think for the future I’ll look for a more elegant off-the-shelf solution to use for the RAC servo wiring, or any smaller gauged wires for that fact.

I’ll be heading to the AOPA fly-in at the Frederick, MD airport tomorrow, so won’t get anything done until maybe early evening… we’ll see!

Chapter 16 – The end is near!

Posted on 20 October, 2016 by Airdog

I had a lot of running around to do today, so by the time I got home it was actually late afternoon. The weather is still unseasonably warm, so I figured since it was nice out and NOT raining, I would get some more outside work done.

Now, I may have mentioned it before, but I haven’t put a lot of emphasis on it . . . yet. But I’m essentially reverting back to the very first week of this project and slowly cutting all the pieces for a front seat, instrument panel & avionics bay mockup, or simulator, of my Long-EZ (See my Initial Project Planning page for an idea). This will allow to test locations of instruments on the panel, for both actual spacing & location preference, and also will allow me to work through the manuals with the instruments powered up in front of me so I can input all the settings in the actual cockpit environment. Serendipitously, I now have both an Infinity stick and a spare throttle quadrant to use in “the Sim.”

Since I have most of the pieces cut already, the main parts that were missing were the armrests. Since I reconfigured my outside shed, I know have access to my router table and it still has the round-over bit that I used on the real armrests… and still set at the exact same position! So I cut these pieces, rounded them over along the top edge pieces and then notched the right side armrest for the control stick. This will be a project for when it gets super cold this winter, or snowed in, etc.

Ok, so I would consider this next part Chapter 12, mounting the canard. But it’s good to mix it up a bit eh? I hope you answered yes, otherwise I’m sure my blog is a lesson in futility for you. ha!

So I cleaned up the BID layups securing the 1/4″ thick Finnish Birch plywood piece that was pressed into service as the elevator control stop. It does exactly what its official title states in that it stops the elevator from traveling more than 30° down. Do I have an elevator up control stop? Well, technically it’s the trailing edge (TE) of the canard, but let’s hope that I don’t use it much!

Here’s a closer view of the elevator control stop.

I then really started back on the control system by marking where the aileron control system bearing (CS123) gets mounted into the firewall. The plans state W.L. 12.3 and B.L. 6.2R, so that’s what I marked up.

I then grabbed my German hole saw and drilled a 1.5″ hole (stock bearing is 1″, but the much nicer Cozy Girrrls bearing is 1.5″ in diameter).

When I drilled the hole, I angled down and to the right just a bit towards the U-joint on the end of the CS116 control tube.

Since the hole I drilled was almost exactly 1.5″ in diameter, I had to sand the hole with the round Perm-a-grit tool. Just a few minutes worth of sanding did the trick, and then the bearing fit perfectly.

Here’s a closer view . . . both pics obviously have the CS122 control arm inserted.

Here’s a view bore sighting down the CS122 control tube… the object at the other end is a little out of focus eh?

Well, let me help! It’s the U-joint at the end of the CS116 control tube!

Here’s a shot of the aft cockpit flight control setup

Of course there’s NO plug & play on these birds, some trimming is ALWAYS required!

OK, maybe a lot of trimming. This is what happens when it’s required to modify the aircraft for non-standard parts (in my defense, I had no idea that this control system would need so much re-wickering of stuff. I may have just not bought the CG’s control kit and rolled my own if I did!).

Even the arm rest’s front interface with CS118 is jacked up now! Clearly I’m going to have to do a little bit of tap-dancing to get all this stuff to work right . . , like it did before I went that ONE next step! ha!

To feel like I was actually getting something accomplished, I went ahead as per plans and drilled a #12 hole through CS121 and the control U-joint (also as per plans I started with a 1/8″ pilot hole).

I then bolted in an AN3-11A bolt –which seems a hair long to me– and mocked up my new CS121 control tube assembly with the existing CS116 control tube.

Here’s another view.

Tomorrow I’ll continue to work the clearance on the right armrest.

Also, I’m having a special visitor this Monday boys & girls! Yep, it’s Marco!!! He’s coming here to do one of his quarterly inspections and tell me all the stuff I’m doing wrong! haha! In all serious (but don’t blab this to him!) I’m going to try to fit in glassing in the upper engine mount extrusions this weekend so that when Marco gets here he can help me flip the fuselage and glass in the lower extrusions, then help me flip the fuselage back upright before he leaves.

Chapter 9, 13, 16 – A myriad of stuff

Posted on 19 October, 2016 by Airdog

I started today off by peeling the peel ply off the autopilot pitch servo mounting pad & doing some minor cleanup around the edges of the layup.

I then mounted the pitch servo with the control rod in place to show what it will pretty much look like when installed operationally.

I took the pic below with my phone and included it here because it shows the actual color much better, which is a rich yam orange vs. a sweet potato gold showing up in the pics above.

I had to run out and run some errands for a few hours, but when I returned home I went to work on fixing the “crease” that was running down the middle of my Infinity stick grip. Something was misaligned inside to cause a noticeable edge of one half of the stick off from the other.

The first thing I did was to “crimp” the adapter I bought from JD at Infinity to more closely encircle the adapter I made. The second thing I did was reroute some of the internal wires that I think simply had nowhere to go so was bunching up a hair and knocking the halves just slightly askew.

Still, it was the proverbial “herding cats” game but I finally got it. I then torqued the screws down to keep it that way, only to read a few minutes later in the instructions: “Don’t over tighten the screws!” . . . oh, well. They are tight!

So far the problem is solved, but I’ll have to play around with it for a while to see if it regresses before I add blue Loctite to the threads.

For those of you more esoteric types that like more pastel colors, like turquoise, I offer you this . . . I call it, “Nouveau Grip.”

So, there I was . . . it was late afternoon, and the days are getting shorter. Also, this warm weather spell is supposed to end tomorrow so I figured I had better get outside and do some saw work . . . er, uh, I mean some milling work! Ok, milling work on a poor man’s milling machine, aka “a table saw.”

I bought a 2.5″ wide x 0.5″ thick bar of 2024 from ACS specifically to make my inboard mounts for the wheel pants. I did a quick measurement of one of the inboard axle bolts & plate, then marked off the 2024 bar stock for cutting.

I stole the idea for these from Bernie Siu, who ended up with this style after 2 prior iterations of inboard wheel pant mounts, including the original style called out by Gary Hertlzer in the instructions. These are bit more “elegant” in style, and if all plays out the way I intend, the horizontal “bar” will be able to be used to jack up the gear leg to change tires, etc.

I want to point out that these are in the ROUGH stage, since, as I mentioned before, I had to use the poor man’s milling machine to get these ginned up.

Here’s a profile shot of the wheel pant inboard mounting brackets. I thinned the top and bottom plate material down to 1/8″ by cutting into the 1/2″ bar 3 times, an 1/8″ at a time (for a total of a 3/8″ deep cut).

The shot below is more to show the other 2 pieces I cut from the 2024 bar stock, and that’s a 3/8″ x 3/8″ x 1.2″ plug that will go into the end of a 1/2″ x 1/2″ 6061 square tube that I’m using as a crossbar for the GIB top seatbelt straps. Since riding in the back of Marco’s Long-EZ, although not bad at all, I can see where there could easily be a need for folks to bring the top seatbelt straps in closer together.

My bar will be secured in 3 places: on each side with the forward engine extrusion bolt into the CS spar as the original plans upper seatbelt bracket tabs were. And then in the middle of the bar into a hard point in the CS spar. These 2024 square plugs will reinforce the hollow tubing for the 1/4″ AN4 bolt that will get installed vertically through each side of this bar to hold it and also, more importantly, secure the engine mount extrusion in place to the CS spar.

With my metal cutting tom-foolery behind me, I started working on a quasi-requirement of Trio for the autopilot. In the manual it states to not have the autopilot act as the hard stops for the aircraft control system. Although we don’t have hard control stops in most of our Long-EZs, I decided I would do what I could and put in a stop for full aft stick.

I had originally thought I would put a stop in both sides, under each torque tube offset arm. I may still do that, but for now I decided to just do it under the offset arm where the pressure is getting applied from the control system: the right side. Nonetheless, when I decided this, I had already marked the area on the bottom of the canard where the finish needed to be removed to get to bare glass (below). I did this for both left & right sides.

Here’s a couple shots with the finish removed, and with the glass sanded and ready for glassing.

Here’s a long view with the elevator control hard stop in place. The elevators are set at just a skooch over 30° at about 30.5°, just to make sure the full operational limit is obtained.

In addition to Trio’s requirements (which apparently I’m meeting only 25% of! …. actually, I talked to Chuck Busch and he said all was good with my install plan!), I found an old CP (CP# 48 pg 4) that stated some canard pilots were having issues rotating if they pulled full aft stick and the elevators went past 30° down. This gets into the backside of the lift curve and interestingly may not get the nose of the plane off the ground. As per the CP, in this scenario one would be “on the “back side” of the lift curve, lift is less than maximum and the elevator is creating lots of drag.” Marco was having some of these same type of issues on his plane, and found that NOT going full aft stick on takeoff was giving him better liftoff. Of course I’ll test it out and adjust the stop as necessary IAW this CP.

Here’s a closer shot of the elevator control stop.

I then floxed the elevator control stop in place, made some flox fillets and glassed each side with 1 ply of BID initially. Then, since I had enough epoxy, I added one more ply of BID to the inboard side since my first NON-prepregged piece of BID decided to go just a tiny bit wonky on me. I then peel plied the glass intersection on the canard surface.

Later in the evening, I reinstalled the Infinity stick grip in the arm rest and tested it out. Alles ist gut! . . . so far.

I realized the other night that my initial estimations on where the rudder pedals needed to be mounted were way off! I guess I’m just a lot taller than I remember (ha!) because twice I had to remount the rudder pedals farther forward. In addition, the space in the nose is TIGHT, and I may have to lop off the inboard tubes that make up the “T” on the rudder pedals. Currently, it’s just too difficult to set my feet along side them as if I were in the relaxed cross country mode, then bring my feet back onto the pedals. My shoes snag on that top pedal crossbar and make it a real hassle to get my feet back on the pedal. Since it’s so narrow on each side anyway, I doubt if lopping off that extra metal tubing will affect my ability to mash these pedals when needed!

With a really good idea of my pedal geometry now, I decided to re-attack the placement of the Atkinson pitch trim assembly. After mocking it up in different spots for a bit, I pretty much concluded that it has to go where I had planned for it to, except with one minor modification: it most likely will have to be mounted at an angle with the actuator motor leaning from 30-45° inboard to clear the upper curvature of the nose.

Tomorrow I have to get some work done on my truck, then run some more errands. I plan on finalizing some more of this perpetual odd-n-end stuff and hopefully move onto doing stuff that’s actually covered in the plans!

Chapter 16/17/22 – AP Pitch Servo

Posted on 18 October, 2016 by Airdog

Today was all about getting the Trio Pro Pilot Autopilot pitch servo mounting bracket glassed in place on the right fuselage side wall. Since I prepped everything last night, it allowed me to just jump into the fray this morning.

I started by cleaning off the Clickbonds with Acetone & then adding a dab of 5-min glue to the bottom of each one. I had them in place in the mounting bracket to allow me to align the Clickbonds to the actual pitch servo bottom mounting plate when I glue them to the sidewall.

I then lined up the whole assembly and pressed the Clickbonds into place onto the fuselage sidewall. I held it there by hand for about 3 minutes to ensure the 5-minute glue set up. I kept the bottom edge of the mounting bracket aligned with my angled alignment mark that I had made on the side wall, and my left-right alignment was my arrow on the lower left corner of the mounting bracket that aligns with the intersection of the slanted alignment mark and a point 7-3/4″ aft of F22.

After a few more minutes I pulled off the mounting bracket from the Clickbonds, and after a few double-checks on their alignment, let them cure. The middle dark area just to the right of the left row of Clickbonds is actually a 2-ply BID layup I threw on the side wall to help fill in the elevation gap between the uber 4-ply BID that secures F22, and the sidewall just aft of all that thick BID pad [not a big deal, but perhaps the install could have been better engineered by the Trio gang to avoid this 4-ply BID pad-to-sidewall transition area?….still, no big worries].

As the Clickbonds cured I whipped up some epoxy and wet out the prepregged 3 plies of BID. I then used the mounting bracket to mark the BID to allow me to cut small holes in it for the 6 Clickbond access holes.

I then whipped up some flox and applied it around each Clickbond base and in the transition area to provide a straight foundation for the mounting bracket.

I then laid up the prepregged 3 plies of BID. While the prepreg plastic was still on, I taped up the bottom of the pitch servo for anti-gunk protection and used the actual servo to press in on the flox to attain the exact amount of flox angle required for the servo to sit flat against the sidewall.

I then pulled the peel ply top plastic, applied a bunch more flox and then set the mounting bracket into place. I then laid up the 2-ply BID prepreg over the mounting bracket. Again, with the prepreg plastic still on, I once more set the actual servo on the Clickbonds and applied firm pressure to set the mounting bracket, flox and BID plies into place.

I then pulled the prepreg plastic and peel plied the entire layup.

Today was a short work day since I helped an Air Force buddy that just arrived into the area move some furniture. Tomorrow I’ll pull the peel ply and clean up this layup. Then I’ll mount the pitch servo. I also need to reset the mounting bracket inside the Infinity stick grip because the plastic handle halves are misaligned just a bit, and it’s creating a ridge down the center of the grip stick that will annoy the snot out of me if I have to fly with it! With that, I’ll continue to work the main fuselage/cockpit flight controls as much as possible until I can’t continue (i.e. no firewall aft controls) and I expect to be getting back to the wheel pants next week.

Chapter 16 – Getting a Grip!

Posted on 17 October, 2016 by Airdog

I started off today by spending a good 45 minutes mounting the elevators to the canard. The hinge pins went in significantly easier than they have in the past, but I still have to flip the canard right side up to get the pin tips to natural hang point down inside the elevator tubes to get get them through the middle hinge pin bracket.

After getting the elevators mounted, I then gathered up the hardware & attached the elevator push rod end to the outboard side of the right torque tube offset arm.

With the canard & elevators remounted, I then clamped the outboard ends of the elevator to the outboard ends of the canard to set the elevator at 0°. I know that the elevator is positioned just a bit lower than this during cruise flight and I would intuitively think that the control stick position would correlate with the cruise position, but since nothing is referenced in the Roncz canard plans I went with the original Chapter 11 plan’s “neutral elevator” position… although I guess that could be interpreted a few different ways. Nonetheless, I called this 0° neutral and rigged the elevator control push tube accordingly.

[A side note: for some reason my elevators are about 3/16″ off between the two sides at the outboard tip. I’ll use the hot weather trick when the weather gets hot again next year to straighten them out. Not sure why they’re off, perhaps they settled in differently during storage].

With the elevators pinned at 0°, I then set the control stick positioned 5° forward as per plans. I then marked the CS136 control tube, cut it and then drilled & riveted the rod end into place. I then mounted the elevator push tube to make my first officially moving control surface!

Here is the elevator with the control stick at neutral.

And again with the control stick full aft.

And the stick full forward.

With the elevator rigging completed, I then turned to finalizing the installation of my Infinity stick grip. To make clearance for the decent-sized cable exiting the bottom front of the Infinity stick grip, I needed to mirror the cable channel on the stick grip adapter onto the CS103 control stick tube. I sat in the pilot’s seat and set the stick so it was “clocked” correctly for my hand in a natural position. I then marked the intersection of the Infinity stick grip adapter and CS103. I then removed the stick grip and finished marking the channel that would need to be cut into CS103.

Since I haven’t been able to repair my downed Dremel Tool yet, I bought a cheap HF rotary tool for less than $20 and used that to cut the channel in my CS103 control stick. I left 0.8 of full tubing on the bottom of CS103 for strength and to have an area to drill & mount an AN3 bolt which will secure the Infinity stick grip.

Then, just to make sure I got it right, I climbed back into the seat and did one final clocking of the control stick position. I marked this final position at the base of the stick . . .

and then drilled the base to accept an AN3 bolt. I then attached the bolt & Voila! My front Infinity control stick grip is officially mounted!

Here’s a better shot.

With the elevator controls rigged & my stick grip mounted, I then spent a few minutes getting a feel for how the Atkinson pitch trim assembly was going to get mounted into place. As you can see, I wedged the pitch trim assembly up into place using a 2×4 resting on the rudder pedal.

Here’s a shot from the front of the plane.

Here’s another shot with the actuator motor turned facing down, which may be required for clearance for the top of the nose. I also need to set my rudder pedals in their final position and check that my right foot has clearance with the pitch trim assembly.

After I removed the canard, I tested moving the pitch trim assembly aft into the area between F22 & the IP. Although my foot could be very close to the actuator assembly (what isn’t a tight fit in a Long-EZ???) this may just be a viable mounting position.

Done with my pitch trim test-fitting shenanigans, I then moved forward with preparations for mounting the Trio autopilot pitch servo. Since I’m messing with the elevator control system, I figured now was a good time to knock out installing the AP pitch servo mounting.

If you remember back a few months ago, I had to send my pitch servo back to Trio to have them install the auto trim option. In transit back to Trio the Postal Service decided to drop kick this sucker… enough so that even buried in inches of bubble wrap they managed to ding a corner of the mounting baseplate. Well, most things work out for a good reason in the end, and this was one of those. Chuck at Trio sent me the dinged mount back with the upgraded pitch servo. I figured it was a novelty item until it came to actually mount the pitch servo. After digging into the installation manual & documentation, I realized this dinged baseplate will serve as a perfect mounting base for my pitch servo install!

Although a bit out of order from the installation instruction sheet I got from Chuck, I cheated a bit using Nick Ugolini’s documented install instructions and went ahead with cutting the pitch servo pushrod to length (4.05″).

I then mounted an HM4 rod end on the freshly cut end (elevator side) using 1/8″ rivets.

Then, to lighten an already light pitch servo mounting base, I made Swiss cheese of the previously dinged up base. More importantly, these holes are to allow flox to ooze through and better secure the mounting base. A final important note is that you can see that a compelling reason to use the dinged up mounting base is that it already has holes that align perfectly to the actual pitch servo base mount. I called Chuck earlier to confirm that it was ok to drill the out these mounting holes to accept a 10-32 bolt, thus allowing me to use Clickbonds to secure the pitch servo in place. Also, since the AP servos are sensitive to twist & minute movements that can cause slight errors in AP track functions, I’m using 3 Clickbonds per side to ensure the pitch servo is mounted securely and as little twisting action as possible is allowed during operation.

I then sanded the area on the right sidewall in prep for mounting the AP pitch servo.

My last task of the evening was cutting 5 plies of BID for mounting the AP pitch servo. All the plies allow for 1″ overlap around the AP base mount, so they measure 5″ x 8″. The layup schedule for these will consist of the Clickbonds getting floxed into place, 3 plies of BID over the Clickbons, the base plate with liberal amounts of flox and then finally 2 plies of BID on top.

Tomorrow I’ll layup the glass for the AP pitch servo mount, and continue to work on the control system. In fact, I really just need to mount the aft cockpit-to-firewall control components and I’ll be finished with Chapter 16, so I’ll knock that out before moving back onto the wheel pants install.

A Long EZ Push

The Building of Long-EZ N916WP

Monthly Archives: October 2016