Not that I am… but I like the concept!

I started off today by sanding down the left elevator tube and then Alodining it.  It was raining lightly so I let the tube soak in the PVC pipes just inside the garage door & out of the rain.  As you can see, to keep the tubes upright I simply stuffed them into my shop recycle bin.

In between the extended soaking times of my very weak Alumaprep & Alodine, I measured out the fuselage “saddles” that will keep the fuselage safely atop the fuselage dolly.

I kept the bottom of each saddle 3-1/2″ high to keep them the same height as a regular 2×4.

Here’s the first cut “saddle”.

And here are the saddles in place, although not yet mounted.

I should note that before I cut the front saddle I measured the angle of the work top of the fuselage dolly.

The goal to match the angle of the longerons with that of the work platform on the fuselage dolly.  As you can see, they both came out at the same angle.

My next task was to drill a 3/8″ hole 4 inches from the side of each saddle into the 2×3 below it.  The 2×3’s will be mounted flat and then each saddle bolted to the 2×3.

Here’s a shot of the fuselage mounted on the fuselage dolly in the saddles.

I also mounted 3 tie-down points on each side of the fuselage dolly: one next to each saddle, front & aft, and then one in the middle of the work table.

Along with finishing up a lot of tasks on the fuselage dolly, I also reorganized the garage to facilitate the nose build and cleaned up a bunch.  After I finished with my non-build tasks, I got back to work on the left elevator rebuild.

Below is a shot of the elevator tube after the Alodine dried.

Now, to get the left elevator foam core mounted on the elevator tube so that it matches the right elevator tube, especially the TE, I simply couldn’t build it as if it were a new build. Why? Well, when I originally drilled the elevator tubes to mount them to the torque offsets, which occurred at the same time with both elevators aligned, that action locked in the two elevators so that they were in synch and also ensured that the TE’s matched in trail.

Thus, I had to do a little reverse engineering in mounting the left elevator foam core to the left elevator tube.  I had been pondering this quite a bit over the last week and finally decided to mount the elevator foam core with the elevator tube mounted on the canard, in conjunction with the other elevator tube, spool tube, torque offsets, etc. exactly as it would be in its final install.  In using this method the first step would be to lock the right elevator TE in place, and then that would let me know where the left elevator TE needs to be.

Now, to take this one step further I wanted to mount the elevators to the canard with the canard in a nose down/TE up position.  I pondered on this a bit as well and finally decided on a method:

I started by measuring the distance between the LE and the canard mounting tabs, which was about 3-1/2″… obviously the same width as a 2×4.  So I mounted a 2×4 to the work bench with clamps.  I really wanted to avoid (at worst minimize) any damage to the mounting tab holes, so I used a drill bit as a smooth mounting peg on one side by simply drilling the bit into the 2×4 until the cutting edge disappeared into the wood.  I then released the chuck and left the drill bit in the 2×4 (you can see this drill bit on the top right side of the 2×4).

Here’s a closeup shot of the drill bit as a mounting peg.

I then used a fine-threaded screw and covered all but the first 25% of the screw threads with electrical tape to mount the other canard mounting tab.

The first issue I noted is the mismatch between the TE of the new right elevator and the TE of the right swoosh tip.  Now, I haven’t done specific measurements on the width of the of the elevator, so this may be a passing issue.  Of course I made a note of it and it will have to be remedied in some fashion.

I then clamped the right elevator TE to keep it aligned.

Since this evening was all about fixing my elevator woes, it was nice to finally have something go right, as in I’m very happy that the outboard elevator weight fits perfectly into its notched home in the canard.

Here’ are couple shots of the canard with right elevator, et al, mounted.

Now, I have to admit that I just could not get either of the hinge pins into the inboard tube hinge points.  I finally unmounted the canard, laid it flat in its normal right-side-up position and with a little firm coaxing and twisting with vice grips those suckers slid right in.  On the bright side I guess it’s nice to know that they’ll go in when the plane is right side up.  It would suck if it was the other way around!  Yuk, yuk!

I then pulled out the second set of elevator foam cores that I just recently got from Eureka CNC.

To check how square the ends of these foam cores were I placed them end to end.

I then measured the paired cores and marked a line at 53″.  I then cut the second foam core and confirmed that the two combined cores equalled 53″.

To keep the mess on the canard to a minimum, and to also keep the micro’d left elevator core as straight as possible, I decided to only micro the smaller of the left elevator foam cores pieces onto the tube.  To start, I mocked up that smaller piece as you can see below.  It fit perfectly and very snugly.

I mixed up some micro and micro’d on the smaller piece of the left elevator core.  I ran a line from the right elevator TE to match the left elevator TE as closely as possible in trail to the right side.

Here’s a wide angle shot of the left elevator core piece installed.

And a shot from the top side of the canard.

I let the micro cure for about an hour before dismantling the elevator assembly.  With the smaller elevator core piece micro’d securely in place, I then merely mounted the remaining elevator core with micro.

And then weighed down the elevator core, specifically the TE.

Here’s a shot of the curing left elevator core micro’d to the elevator tube, and a shot of the entire canard back in a “normal” state.

Tomorrow I plan on finishing the major glassing of the left elevator, both top and bottom. As I’ve mentioned before, once I start getting close to finishing the left elevator, I’ll start ramping up more on the nose build.

After taking a long hard look at the left elevator I made the call to rebuild it.  The plans say that you can sand the skin down to 1 ply of glass with no issues as long as the areas aren’t too big (around 2″ in diameter).  I met this criteria, the weight was under control after the heavy sanding, but the skin felt just a little too soft in that there was just a bit of give in about 3 of the 5 thinly sanded spots.  My gut told me that this was ok and met the “letter of the law,” but since I have a perfectly “perfect” elevator core from Eureka CNC on hand, my brain said the right thing to do was rebuild this sucker.  I want to be clear, this wasn’t a decision borne of fear, but one of optimization.  I simply want to be able to run this bird as fast as I want to, without worries yes, but the more complete the elevator skin is, then common sense dictates the less prone to structural failure if I do encounter any flutter.

So, I chose to rebuild.

Here is the left elevator when I started this evening.

I began by removing the torque tube offset on the inboard side.

And then I removed the outboard weight.

If you remember, a while back I had a “moment” as I was floxing the inboard elevator hinge bracket into the canard slot.   I had some type of exotherm issue where it spit out a good portion of the flox onto the hinge, torque tube, etc.  The flox even bridged between all these parts and the fishtail area of the canard TE.  I was heading out to meet my buddy Rob, so if I hadn’t found this issue and cleaned it up my life would have been hell for a at least a few days.

Anyway, that incident left some flox on the elevator torque tube offset that I never really noticed until today.  After I removed the installing torque offset, I heated it up with the heat gun on high and then scraped off the dried epoxy.

This was the result of my cleaning:

Below is a shot of the “clean” left elevator with all the “add-ons” removed.

Then, as I did with the right elevator, I checked the gaps for hinge slot spacing with the hinge pin and NC7’s installed.

After I got my hinge spacing set and spacers cut to size, I made my first cut to remove the skin along the top of elevator.

And then the next cut along the bottom of the elevator near the tube.  I used my trusty Fein saw to make these cuts (BTW, in my shop Fein=Harbor Freight!)

I then extricated the elevator tube from the glass & foam of the now “old” elevator core.

I cleaned off the old foam & micro with my razor knife in the first round of elevator tube cleaning.

Then, just as with the right elevator tube, I dunked it in a PVC tube full of solution.  Only this time I soaked it in acetone vs. white vinegar since I wanted to get this tube completely cleaned by evening’s end.  I figured acetone would probably have a bit more of a “bite” to it.

While the elevator tube was soaking, I removed the canard from its mounts and cleaned the leftover Bondo off the mounts.

With the mounts clean (read: no scratching or gouging the top finish), I flipped the canard upside down.  I was pleased that the Bondo blobs securing the canard to the mounts turned out to be pretty much in as inconspicuous places as I could possible get them.

If you look closely at the pics below, you can see that the Bondo is right on the line of the junction (or corner) where the bottom of the canard meets the fuselage.  Clean up and noticeability in this area shouldn’t be too demanding.

I then took a long shot of the canard –bottom view– that clearly shows that I have a fair amount of work left on the bottom side of the canard as well.

After a couple of hours, I removed the elevator tube from the acetone for its final cleaning.

Note the NG30 assembly to F22 bulkhead clamp in the background for the upcoming nose build.  I drilled and assembled this guy tonight.

Tomorrow I plan on sanding the elevator tube before Alodining it.  If all goes well I should get the elevator foam core attached to the elevator tube and the bottom skin laid up.

Today I had to attend my weekly broker’s meeting at the office.  On the way home I stopped off at Lowe’s, Michael’s and Home Depot in search of some springs for my ratchet pawls for the fuselage dolly.  No joy.  I guess I’ll have to look online for them.

Once back at the house, I started off with finishing about an hour’s worth of research on some of the electrical components, updating my nose wiring/component placement diagram, and a little research on the ADS-B & GRT EFIS interface.

I then spent about 45 minutes sanding the top of the canard with 120 grit paper using the long board.  I’ve got to tell you that sanding it this time around with the primer completely cured was so much easier than the first time around.  The primer sanded very nicely and I was able to get a bunch of it off and the canard top very close to its final shape.

At this point I was at a bit of crossroads: I still needed to get the canard flipped to mount the elevators, but I also wanted to finish the surface of the canard top as much as possible. Since I haven’t yet decided on a paint system, and thus the required primer, I couldn’t very well just apply a final coat of primer.

Since there are still surface imperfections & depressions, I decided to fill those before moving forward on any other finish actions.  Normally, after a good sanding where so much of the original primer coat has been sanded away, I would simply apply another couple of coats of high build primer and greatly minimize the surface imperfections.  But again, since I’m not sure which primer I’m using at this point, I punted and went with filling all the low areas on the canard top surface.

I started by angling a shop light at the surface from each end of the canard and looking at the surface at a very low angle to find all the imperfections.  As I found each low point I circled it lightly with a pencil.

I then popped open a can of Z-Grip that a buddy of mine was storing in my shop and said I could use if I ever needed it.  I swore that I had used this in past 9 months, but apparently not!  I tried stirring this to see if I could revive it, but the ship had sailed on the usability of this stuff.

I had even picked up a tube of hardener for the Z-Grip when I picked up the Evercoat Metal Glaze Finishing Putty, and yes, even though it has “metal” in the title, this stuff is a standard high quality glazing putty and works like a champ on fiberglass applications.

It actually turned out better that the Z-Grip was a pile of goo since for my filling requirements the Metal Glaze worked perfectly.  It took 3 separate mixing sessions and about 15 minutes to get the low lying areas filled.

Since the glazing putty cures so quickly, I immediately started cheese grating it to get each spot down close to its final level, using 80 grit strips that I cut out from some used long board sandpaper that I was going to throw away

Here’s a shot of the right side after cheese grating the glazing putty spots.

After returning from dinner, I mounted some peel-n-stick 80 grit paper to my sanding block and sanded just the puttied areas.  I got them really close to their final level, feathering the edges of each puttied spot to the existing canard surface.

After the lion’s share of the feathering was completed with the 80 grit hard board, I then loaded up another sheet of 120 grit on the stiff long board and sanded down each side of the canard, focusing of course on ensuring that the puttied areas were blended nicely into the existing canard surface.

I then checked the profile with the top canard contour template on each side, and was very happy with the results.

I cleaned the top of the canard off of any sanding dust, and really took my time feeling the surface with my hands for any imperfections. I then went over the entire canard top surface again lightly with the 120 grit long board focusing on any minor issues left to be dealt with.

I then focused on the edge of the right swoosh tip to feather in the two spots I had filled with glazing putty.

I’m very satisfied with the final fill of the canard top surface.  Although I’m sure a few minor elevation differences will rear their ugly heads during future final sandings and surface prep, the top of the canard is ready for a final coat or two of primer, some final wet sanding, and then paint.  Obviously, as per above, I just have to figure out what primer & paint that will be!

Now that I’ve got my electrical component curiosity satisfied for the internal nose configuration, I was finally able to focus on getting the fuselage pulled out from under the canard build table and mounted onto the fuselage dolly.

Over the next few days I’ll be focusing primarily on the bottom of the canard: getting all the divots filled and sanding it for final paint prep.  I’ll also be remounting the elevators, checking alignment, and rebuilding the left elevator.  Finally, I’ll finalize the mounting of the fuselage on the dolly, reconfigure the shop to allow for room to work on the fuselage, and get moving on the nose build.

For the right elevator at least.

I started off today by trimming the elevator 1-ply BID glass that I laid up last night.  I never made it back down to razor trim, so thank goodness it’s only one ply.  I then sanded the edges flush with the surrounding top & bottom skins.  I also had to cut out the glass over the NC-6 insert, and while doing so thought I should have stepped out of my paradigm and just glassed over all of it.  Oh, well, a few more minutes and I had what you see below.

I then turned my sights first on sanding the rough spots of the LE, and I then pulled the peel ply and sanded the TE.

I took my German Praktiker special hand saw and cut the channels for the hinges.  After the major cut, I cleaned up the channels with a razor blade and removed the duct tape over the hinge pin holes.

Below is a shot of the ancillary clean up, including the two hinge channels, the set screw hole at the close end and the torque office attach bolt hole at the opposite end.

With the elevator pretty much completed, I turned my sights on the outboard elevator weight.  I marked up a new foam spacer on the H100 foam piece I have on hand. I then cut it out and shaped it with 36 grit sandpaper.

I worked for about 10-15 minutes to get the foam spacer shaped properly, and then floxed the weight & foam spacer in place using the templates.   Now, interestingly enough the plans say that you can use 5-minute glue, but of course I didn’t think of this until I had a batch of flox mixed up and of course I just bought some last week.

Oh, well, I just had to wait a little bit longer to glass it with 2 plies of UNI.

A few hours later I cut out 2 strips of UNI and laid them up around the outboard elevator weight as per plans.  I then peel plied the layup before heading out for the evening.

When I returned everything looked good & cured.  I pulled the peel ply, razor cut the glass, and then hit the edges very briefly with sandpaper.  Here’s the end result.

And with that folks, I’m calling the right elevator rebuild complete!

Here’s a shot of the trimmed elevator as it looked when I started working on it today.

I pulled the elevator off the workbench and was happy that by using the foil tape I had NO divots on the top of my elevator foam.  In addition, you’ll note the blobs of 5 minute glue on the table.

For whatever reason the 5-minute glue blobs came off rather easily.  After about 5 minutes with a chisel and a razor glade the table was clean.

I then sanded the TE even.  After sanding I marked a line about 0.32″ forward of the TE for the glass-to-glass continuity between top & bottom elevator skins.

After removing the foam with my razor knife, i sanded down the TE glass with a sanding board.

I then Dremeled the remaining crud off the TE to finalize the prep.  And here’s the results: ha!

I again did a quick check of the top contour with the “H” template.

Although I forgot to do this on the bottom (Doh!) I did remember to add the depression in the foam for the UNI plies that attach the outboard elevator weight.

After I finished all the prep actions for the layup, I flipped the elevator over and applied foil tape to the underside of the elevator.  Again, I’m doing this to avoid all the issues I had with the previous elevator, and exactly the reason why I’m rebuilding this elevator!

After applying SMALL Bondo blobs to the foil tape pieces I mounted the elevator to the table and then weighed it down with sandbags.

After affixing the elevator to the workbench with Bondo I had about an hour to go before a work webinar so I started working on the nose gear actuator wiring since I knew I didn’t have enough time to finish the top elevator skin layup.

My first task was to pull off the motor side Molex connector, since I’ll be replacing it with an AMP CPC connector.

I then double-checked the charge on my nose gear back-up battery.  At 13.11V it looked good and seems to be holding its charge well.

While tracing out & connecting the wires for the nose gear actuator I was able to integrate & plan out the wiring for the gear & canopy warning module.  Basically, I figured out that I can use the up & down limiter “micro-switches” on the nose gear actuator to drive the warning signals to my gear/canopy warning module.  Of course the only issue is that I’ll need to order another AMP CPC connector.  No worries really, since I was going to have to do some finagling with the thick power wires to get them into the 9-pin AMP CPC connector.  A larger connector will be able to accommodate bigger wires.

After my webinar and playing around with the nose gear actuator wiring for a bit, I went back downstairs and vacuumed the foam before starting the layup.

I then micro’d the top elevator surface.

And laid up 2 plies of UNI at 30° in opposite directions.

Since I used fast hardener I only had to wait about an hour before the layup was cured to a green stage.  I then razor trimmed the TE.

And then applied dry micro on the TE and covered it with peel ply.

I turned on a heat lamp to help get this thing cured as fast as possible.

After watching some TV and working on this post for well over an hour, I then went down to the shop to check the elevator top skin layup.  It all looked good and was pretty much cured.  I carefully pulled the elevator away from the table mainly to keep the TE micro from securing the elevator permanently to the workbench and causing real mayhem if I had waited until tomorrow to pull it off the bench.

After pulling the foil tape off the elevator bottom I was ecstatic that the elevator bottom was SO clean & devoid of that Bondo crap that caused all the issues with the previous elevator! I couldn’t help but think how EZ this would have been had I known this trick back when I first built my elevators!

My next order of business was to cut away any stray LE glass overlap to keep any of the barbs-from-hell, that may have slipped past the peel ply, at bay.  I also cleaned the blobs of Bondo off the table.  Which thankfully came off fairly easily.

After cleaning up the LE, I then pulled the peel ply from the outboard weight depression.

I then checked the contour again, only this time obviously with the top skin glassed.  Looking good!

I then focused on the outboard elevator in order to prep that area for the 1-ply BID layup that it will receive.  I sanded the glass edges square and even with NC-6.

I stood the elevator up on end & cut the foam to create a wedge shape near the glass for the flox corners.

I grabbed a piece of scrap BID and cut it to roughly fit the end of the elevator.

I then mixed up some epoxy with fast hardener, made some flox for the corners & some micro for the foam.  I then laid up the 1 ply of BID, trimmed the glass a little and let it cure.

In a couple of hours I’ll check the layup and razor cut the edges.

Tomorrow I plan to finish the elevator rebuild by sanding the TE to its final shape and also attaching the outboard elevator weight.  Then it will just be a matter of cutting, drilling & cleaning up the hinge slots & bolt holes and the elevator rebuild will be complete!

Today I focused entirely on the elevator.  Below is the elevator core micro’d to elevator tube.

I prepped the tube by taping up the holes in the hinge pin hard points (NC2s) and the elevator tube end insert (NC6).

Before glassing the bottom skin I lightly sanded the bottom front edge of the foam core where it intersects with the elevator tube.  I also cleaned up the micro at the seam between the two elevator foam core pieces.

To minimize any damage to the foam surface, and thus minimize backfills to the foam, delams and in turn weight, I applied foil tape to the surface of the elevator top.  I figured I would try this method instead of applying 5 minute glue directly to the foam.

I then quickly checked the bottom contour of the elevator.

And then mixed up some 5 minute glue, applied a good sized drop to each piece of foil tape, and attached the inverted elevator core to the work bench.  I weighed down the TE with sandbags.

After the 5-minute glue cured, I did a final check on the foam before I glassed it.

I also checked the UNI glass to ensure it fit.  I then glassed the lower elevator skin 2-ply UNI layup using fast hardener.

Here’s the (new) glassed bottom of the elevator.

Here are some shots of the finished elevator bottom, in various stages of razor trimmed glass.

I was going to glass the top skin of the elevator as well, but I went out to dinner tonight and it took forever to get our food, so I just didn’t make it back in time to fire up the Dremel tool to trim the TE in order to get good glass-to-glass contact between top & bottom skins.

Tomorrow I’ll prep the elevator & glass the top first thing, and if all works out I’ll actually get the outboard elevator end glassed as well.

Today the UPS guy showed up with the battery charger I ordered from Amazon last week. I ordered this battery charger because in reading the manual for the Odyssey PC680 battery it stated that if the battery charge fell below 12.65 volts, than it needed to be charged before using it.  When I checked the battery the multimeter showed 12.57 volts, clearly below the threshold required to be able to use the battery as per the instructions.

Of course I knew I would need a battery charger eventually since the Odyssey PC680 is an Absorbed Glass Mat (AGM) type that is immune from acid spills and gas venting, and thus has some unique charging requirements to ensure the battery is maintained in an optimized state before it’s actual use in the Long-EZ.  An interesting side note to this battery is that it can be mounted in any position.

Currently, the main reason I want to use the battery is to test the nose gear actuator.  So when the battery voltage tested low I checked the Odyssey website for approved battery chargers.  After assessing a few battery chargers online, I decided on this one and ordered it.

I hooked up the battery to the new charger before heading out to a meeting I had at the office. Before I left for my meeting I went upstairs and changed clothes –about 5 minutes– and when I did a final check before walking out the door the charger had already completed its first 2 phases and was in the basic charging phase.  This was a good sign since the initial phases are conditioning cycles that bring a battery back to the point where it can simply be charged in phase 3, where again, my battery was before I even left the house.  By the time I returned about 2 hours later, the battery was fully charged and was at 13.87 volts.  Not bad!

I’m discussing the battery at this point since the short term use of the battery is to test the nose gear actuator (Chapter 13) while of course the long term use will simply be as the aircraft’s primary power source (Chapter 22).

I then focused on the new elevator build.  I pulled the elevator tube out of the vinegar-filled PVC pipe and did a final clean on the tube.  I then washed down the elevator tube with Simple Green before taking it outside to Alodine it.

I washed out the PVC pipe, filled it full of Alumaprep, and then submerged all but about 18″ of the elevator tube into the Alumaprep.  Since my Alodine chemicals are weak, I left the tube in the Alumaprep for about 8 minutes before taking it out, rinsing it with water and giving it a good scrub.  I then put it back into the Alumaprep with the other end in first.

After the Alumaprep wash, I rinsed down the tube and did the same process in PVC pipe #2 filled with Alodine.  Again, I left it in there way longer than normal, about 8 minutes per side since the Alodine was weak.  After the time had passed, I again gave the whole tube a good rinse with clean water.

I hung the freshly Alodined elevator tube up to dry and then began to prep for micro’ing the elevator foam core to the tube.

Now, I was seconds away from taking a picture of the Alodined elevator tube when my long lost buddy Greg showed up.  Unfortunately when I loaded up all my pics at the end of the evening I realized I hadn’t taken the picture, which is unfortunate because I thought the Alodined tube turned out rather well.

As for the foam cores, since I ordered only the elevator cores from Steve at Eureka CNC, he could only send me the cores cut in half for shipping purposes.  The pics below are shots of one elevator core cut in half.

Here are the two halves end to end.

I marked the second elevator foam core piece to cut to length, making the total combined length of these elevator foam core pieces 53″ to match the length of the elevator tube.

I then did a quick check of the top elevator contour with template “H” and it looked good.

Here’s a pic with the elevator core pieces cut to the proper 53″ length. [Note: these are the correct length of MY elevator cores for this airplane, since I widened the fuselage at all the bulkheads, my F22 & F28 are just a hair wider than the stock plans dimensions.  This widened fuselage resulted in slightly shorter elevators.]

And here’s the two elevator core pieces micro’d to the elevator tube.  Yes, the elevator reconstruction is under way!

As per plans I weighed down the elevator core & tube with sandbags to keep them firmly in place.

Tomorrow I plan to glass the bottom skin, and possibly the top skin, of the elevator.