You might be asking yourself, what the heck is “Section VI?” when the only references so far have been to the chapters within the build plans.  Yeah, well, I think a lot of us builders asked that same question at one point as well.  And, yes, the Section VI plans are a bit of an anomaly.  These plans cover the construction of the Landing Brake and actually have their origins from the Vari-Eze plans (it even states Vari-Eze Section VI Plans on the front page).  They are referred to in Chapter 9, the Main Gear plans.  Thus… mystery solved!

I spent over an hour studying the Section VI plans to determine what applied and what is different since I’m using Jack Wilhelmson’s Electric Landing Brake Actuator.  By using this actuator it wiped out a considerable amount of the Section VI plans.

The reason why the Landing Brake comes into the picture at this point is because a layer of tape—which a glass layup can’t bond to—must be laid out onto the surface of the fuselage foam in the shape of the landing brake BEFORE the fuselage is glassed.  Since I marked out the fuselage centerline last night, it was simply a matter of finding the fore & aft measurement as to where to locate the Landing Brake.  After I found the forward location of the fuselage I marked up the outline of the Landing Brake.  FYI – my Landing Brake is 0.94″ forward from stock plans due to my moving my front seat that much forward to assist the shift in CG since I plan on using a heavier IO-320 engine.

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I started off my Long-EZ build today by reviewing the early Canard Pusher Builder’s Hints and the Landing Brake plans for about 2 hours.

Then, because apparently it was Sanding Day (I hear Canardians are pushing for that to become a national holiday!), I sanded the bottom corners of the fuselage to shape.  The final result may have just a little bit less foam taken off at the corners than the plans show, but the lower corners follow very closely to the template and have a good flow.

Shaping the top of the fuselage at the longerons, in time & effort, was comparatively EZ.

To be honest, I don’t really care for the shape of the top template… it seems a little too flat and could be just a bit more rounded.  But maybe that’s what some folks say in general about the shape of the Long-EZ fuselage!

I also weighed the fuselage today.  Mine weighs 46.6 lbs vs. Mike Melvill’s 41 lbs at this stage.  Considering the extra glass, micro and flox I added both on the sides & bottom during the repairs, and the fact my rear longerons are a just a tad bit thicker, I’ll take the 5.6 lbs heavier fuselage and press on!  Also, I haven’t given the fuselage tapes and repairs a thorough sanding yet, so that will take at least a little weight off.

And unrelated to the fuselage, once I finished shaping the fuselage I drug out all my raw 2024 aluminum pieces and marked up all the various pieces and parts that would come out of them.  It was kind of like putting a puzzle together, but I had fun trying to plan the use the entire length of aluminum while minimizing any significant leftover pieces.

Chapter 7 – Fuselage Exterior

I pulled the peel ply from yesterday’s layups.  Overall, everything looked great. I marked some punch list items and I’ll probably have to add another BID tape a place or two, but it all looks real solid.

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After the bottom cured I noticed that there was a very thin gap between the fuselage bottom foam (at the very front edge) and the aft edge of F22 bulkhead.  This was caused by me centering the foam and compromising between getting the foam acceptably placed & centered on the bulkheads and sides, and getting the front edge of the fuselage bottom to make contact (or as close to contact) to F22 as best possible.  This small gap, about 1/32″ on the left side to almost an 1/8″ on right side, was in part caused by the nose being slightly askew, and the more extreme curvature (football shape) of my fuselage.

On a normal fuselage, F22 sits a lot more square (perpendicular) to the fuselage sides; whereas on my build, the foam sides needed to be beveled to an angle for F22 to sit (or mount) to them squarely.  In retrospect, mine weren’t beveled nearly enough to keep F22 mounted straight across the front.  Since the fuselage sides were beveled/angled (by virtue of them being pulled inwards so much), it created a very slight inward bow of F22 at its midpoint/centerline.

I sanded a thin wedge of foam, and micro’d it to the fuselage bottom foam on one side and floxed it to the aft bottom face of F22.   I then clamped F22 tight against the foam wedge insert and the fuselage bottom’s front edge.  I also added some flox into some very minor gaps between F22 and the bottom triangular longerons. Continue reading →

I removed the peel ply from the fuselage bottom final layups.  Since I laid up the front just a tad more wet than I normally would (just a bit!), I sanded it heavily to remove any excess epoxy & rough spots, and smooth out any of the glass transition edges.

I cut around the edge of the nose wheel well outline with the Dremel tool, exposing the duct tape underneath after I pulled off the glass piece.  BTW, this isn’t per plans.  The plans say to cut out the wheel well area first, then lay up the fuselage bottom glass to the edge of the cutout.  I thought it seemed easier to do what’s done in Chapter 7 with the landing brake, by just laying down a layer of duct tape.  Once I did that, then I didn’t have to concern myself with another edge,  I simply just glassed the area as a normal layup. Continue reading →

I removed the peel ply from last night’s layups.  If you’ve never seen fiberglass after peel ply is removed, it can often leave some ridges and strings along the edges of the laid up peel ply.  That is why I usually try to use as large of a single piece as possible for whatever I’m peel-plying to eliminate all the strings and funky edges.  Thus, I took about an hour to clean up all the peel ply “gifts” leftover from the layups.

After all the peel ply crud was cleaned up, I used 4 scrap pieces for the final 1-ply BID layup to the front 4 compartments of the fuselage bottom. Continue reading →

Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures on this post.  (READ: For historical purposes and might make for some dry reading!)

I micro’d and then glassed the front right-hand corner ding (it was a little crunched from the move) and 2 side delaminations that measured around 1/2″ x 2-1/2″.

I glassed 2 separate pieces of 1-ply BID as a second layer between the FRONT of the rear (GIB) seat and the front (pilot) seat, overlapping by about 4″ onto the raised center part of the floor (i.e. middle of fuselage floor).  I then glassed 1-ply BID from the rear seat trough to the front edge of the front seat, which constituted the second ply in a 2-ply BID layup.  The first ply being the first layup above made up of 2 pieces, then covered by the second ply, made up of one piece and overlapping the edges of the first ply just a bit.

Finally, I used 2 pieces of BID overlapped by about 1-1/2″ at a 45° angle to the side of the fuselage bottom.  This  45° seam cut right through where the front seat back would touch the fuselage bottom.

I then peel plied all the layups.

I cut the first ply (1 whole piece) of BID for the GIB (“Guy or Gal In Back”… the rear passenger, but the slang is “GIB,” so ya better get used to the idear, see!?) floor just forward of the rear seat ‘pan’ I glassed last night. I also cut the second ply (2 pieces) that would be used later for the entire back half of the fuselage floor. And since I was cutting glass, I cut 3 more separate pieces for more delam repair layups on the front half floor.

I glassed the first layer of BID on the GIB floor area as well as laying up glass for the remaining delams: the rear incline of the front seat divot, and two spots at the very forward edge of the fuselage floor. Continue reading →