Today was a slow day for the build, as far as construction.  I spent most of the day watching football while researching a myriad of topics on my nose electrical system components.  Of course research always tends to involve going down a number of rabbit holes and finding other pertinent & helpful pieces of information.

As for my assessment of the electrical nose components in the battery compartment area, I  confirmed the wiring for all the devices and updated my diagram.  At this point I’m about 90% sure that I’ll be mounting the battery buss, and all its associated wiring, on the aft side of the F1-3 bulkhead (Napster) just to the right of the NG30 uprights.

One of the rabbit holes I went down is with the landing and taxi light wiring.  I printed out a fresh copy of my wiring diagram and realized first off that it needed to be updated, but also that I need to figure out the correct circuitry and switchology for the lights, and worked on that for a while.

As the evening wore on, I decided to take a break from the trying to figure out electrical system stuff and get some epoxy curing in the garage.

I sanded down the brake line fittings mini-bulkheads.  I then drilled out the center of the mini-bulkheads and then cut and sanded down the edges of the hexagon shaped holes.

I sanded down the sides of the union fittings with 120 grit paper to prep the surfaces for flox.

I then floxed the union fittings into place into each mini-bulkhead.

I went back upstairs and did a bit more research on my electrical stuff before calling it a night.

Tomorrow I’ll try to finish up all my detailed prep tasks and start cutting some foam for the nose battery compartment area.

I checked the forward F-7.75 bulkhead mount with the cured BID tapes at the BC1/Napster junctions.  The alignment is spot on with the front bulkhead CL matching the other fuselage bulkhead down the line.

My pulling over the F-7.75 nose bulkhead that 1/2″ to the right wasn’t without consequence however.  Not surprisingly, it created an offset in my BC1s where they are slanted to the right so that the angle between the right BC1 and Napster is slightly less than 90° while the angle on the left side is slightly greater than 90°.  This also effected the actual F-7.75 bulkhead straightness a hair.  When I measured the distance between the front bulkhead and Napster at the widest point I got 10.0″ exactly on the right and a hair over 10.1″ on the left.

Here’s a wider angle shot of the front nose bulkhead mounted in place.

And a shot of the BID tape layups attaching the BC1s to Napster.

On my to-do list was to trim another 0.1″ more of foam & glass off the right side of the gear strut channel (left in the pic).  The gear strut wasn’t showing any more rub marks, but it was very close to touching when the gear was up in the channel.

I then started working to construct & mount the brake line fittings mini-bulkheads that will house the union fittings, one on each side.  If I were ordering these fittings I would spend more money to get the bulkhead union fitting, but since I have these on hand I’ll go the cheaper & quicker route and use them.

Since the threaded flare nub makes it difficult to get an outline of the perimeter of the union nut portion, I grabbed an equivalent sized standard nut to use as a template.

Here’s another shot showing the equivalent sized nut to the union nut section.

I then drew out the mini-bulkhead plate on yet another piece of Finnish Birch plywood that was used as a jig on the main landing gear.

I clamped it down and drilled a small starter hole.

Since I’m not sophisticated enough to own & operate a CNC mill like some people (ha!), I had to resort to my neanderthal, old skool ways of getting a not-round hole into this piece of wood.  I used a 1/2″ spade bit to make the initial hole.

I then routed the blade of the coping saw up through the hole and cut the angled edges of the marked hole to enable inserting the middle hexagon shaped area of the union fitting.

Here’s the union fitting inserted it into the hexagon-shaped hole in the mini-bulkhead fitting.

Presenting the poor man’s bulkhead fitting!

Future mods will require glasswork vs simply pulling & replacing the fitting, but for .50 cents a piece in wood, epoxy & glass, I’ll take it!

Is it just me, or do these look like a nice pair of Double D’s?!  haha!

. . . Evil Napster apparently thought so!  (Sorry, had to be done!)

Since I had moved the fuselage dolly over a bit I rechecked the angle between the longerons to check the batter mount angle.

The battery cradle mount was just a hair off from the longerons.

And after a little judicious sanding of the battery cradle mounting surfaces in the BC1’s . . .

I was able to match the battery angle to that of the longerons:

Speaking of the battery, here’s a couple of shots when I put ‘er place to see how it fits.

I’m really happy with the positioning of the battery.  A general guesstimate of the sidewalls in the battery compartment, and it looks like it will have plenty of clearance all the way around.

I then started work on the battery mount, which is nothing more than a 3″ piece of 2024 aluminum tube that gets mounted across the BC1s in holes drilled near center mass of the 5-ply BID reinforcement pads that I laid up on each side of the BC1s specifically for this purpose.

I started with a small pilot hole

And then stepped up with a couple more sizes of bits on my way up to a 1/2″ hole.

And not wanting to use the 1/2″ spade bit for a cleaner, rounder hole, I found this mojamma bit in my bag of tricks . . . Rock on!

Here are the completed, drilled holes for the battery mounting tube.

And here’s a trial fit of the battery mounting tube.  While the tube was in I marked it for cutting.

Since there’s a slight angle with the BC1s, I cut the 2024 tube with my mini German hacksaw that I picked up from Praktiker while in Germany.  Das ist gut Ja?!

The battery mounting cross tube will get added to my list of things to Alodine.

The battery will get mounted to the cross tube across 2 axes: longitudinal & lateral (pitch & roll … or front & back, left & right… ).  The main mounting device will be a 2″ wide military grade webbing strap that has a buckled clasp and then 6″ of velcro for added oomph.  I haven’t finalized the decision on my side-to-side securing strap, but it will mount into threaded plug inserts that will go into the ends of the mounting tube, secured with rivets, etcetera, etcetera.

I then cut & shaped the ends of the H100 high density foam and checked the fit for that.

Here’s a side shot of the H100 foam test-fitted between the BC1 plates.

Since I have more configuring to do before epoxy’s involved in the battery compartment, I turned my sights back onto finishing the myriad of nitnoy tasks in the NOW aft nose area (just cool to be able to say that!).

I had pulled out the tube flaring tool last night, watched a couple refresher videos and practiced flaring a few tubes on 1/8″ aluminum.  Not bad.  I have the simple block flaring tool, and this monstrosity below.  I think it was designed & built during the heyday of the Industrial Revolution . . . could use a few more massive bolt rivets in my book.   Ha!

Switching from the small 1/8″ block flaring tool (not pictured) to this one, I shredded the first flare I tried.  Ah, lesson #1, go gently Grasshopper!  It only takes maybe 3 turns on this bad boy to do the trick, and then once I start feeling pressure, just a hair more, then I STOP.  Alle ist gut!

One of my first test tube flarings with, “The Beast.”  Not bad.  Definitely getting more refined with each one.

One reason I practiced flaring a number tubes is because when it came to flaring the brake line tubing ends in the nose the space was very limited.  It was tight, but I did have just enough skosh of room to work within that it wasn’t overly painful to complete the task.

As you can also see in the pic below, I also started working the cross connect brake line tube that will connect the brake line going aft to the main gear wheel brakes to the Matco parking brake valve (PBV) in the nose.

Also note the Adel clamp mid-run on this new brake line cross connect piece, since it will mount to the front wall of NG30 nose area, which is of course Napster (F1-3 bulkhead).

After I flared the brake line tubes on each side, I then covered up some of the pieces parts in the nose to mount the brake line fittings mini-bulkheads.  I started by mounting them with 5-min glue, then using a flocro mixture for the fillet I laid up a ply of BID on each side of the mini-bulkheads.

Here’s there right side brake line fitting mini-bulkhead.

For my last construction project of the evening, I constructed 2 nutplate assemblies –using 1/16″ phenolic & K1000-3 nutplates– and mounted them to the lower area of Napster, one on each side, to mount Adel clamps for the new brake line cross connect tubes.

Not shown is an actual good 3-hour chunk of the evening.  As I started looking at the battery compartment area to figure out my foam requirements: size, quantity, cutting angles, thickness, etc., I of course was mocking up the components that would reside in that space.  As I was figuring out how & where things would go, taking into account wire runs & access, I kept coming back to the fact that I really had no one single account for the shear number of wires flowing in & out of my nose battery compartment.  Intuitively, it only seemed like a half dozen or so, but it started turning out to be quite a lot more than that . . . quickly.  It was clear to me that I couldn’t really plan out my foam requirements until I had a good account of where my components would go, and I couldn’t account for those devices without a finite accounting of the wire & cable flow.

After physically mocking up the main battery, nose gear back-up battery (which I’m now fairly certain will go forward of the main battery vs aft), battery contactor, battery buss, battery buss relay, and Integrated Backup Battery System (IBBS), I understood that I had to account for literally every wire and cable traversing Napster’s domain to finalize the foam plan for the battery compartment.

Once again, I know my CAD brothers will cringe (and possibly puke a little!) at my Neanderthal PowerPoint notes depicting the battery compartment area.  I worked on this and researched my components for a few hours, and it finally got so late I just listed out the remaining items that I need to research/diagram and called it a night.

I did come out of this process with some good finds, which are listed in my RFI (“request for info”) block.  The biggie is the realization that with so many wires coming into the battery buss, I’m strongly considering mounting it on the aft side of Napster vs the front side of Napster/inside the battery compartment.

Tomorrow I’ll finalize this research and figure out my battery compartment wiring and component plan, and then will start finalize the planning for the battery compartment foam sides and bottom plates.

Here’s the shot I promised of the trimmed voltage regulator click bonds that I finished up yesterday.

And here’s a shot of the cured right side nose panel layup after I pulled the peel ply.

I wet some paper towels with white vinegar and then used clothes pins to secure them to the exposed aluminum brake lines to clean off all the epoxy gunk.

I then set up my small table saw just outside the garage to cut the H100 foam down to 3″ wide.  I’ll be using this piece for the center foam between the BC1’s when it comes time to install that foam.

I then mocked up the clamp setup for attaching the BC1s (NG30 continuation tabs) to the aft side of the F-7.75 bulkhead (the last & most forward of all the bulkheads).

To figure out exactly where the BC1s needed to be mounted to the F-7.75 bulkhead, I reviewed the plans to get my bearings.  I then found and marked W.L. 10 for a good reference point.  After that, I was off to the races.  [Note in the pic below that I drew reference lines next to each BC1 where it met the aft side of F-7.75 . . .  this will come into play here in a moment].

I whipped up some flox using fast hardener & applied to the front edge of each BC1 in their clamped configuration… to keep them 3″ apart, just like the NG30s.

I then lined up the vertical lines I had drawn out and the W.L. 10 side marks.

As the flox was setting up a bit, I prepregged 4 x 2-ply corner BID tapes to layup on the inboard and outboard of both BC1’s.

Ahh, here’s a great shot.  Everything going nice and smooth . . . then . . .

Well, it all sorta just went to hell after that!  Every aspect of this layup looked perfect, EXCEPT, when I was checking out how level & even the 2 BC1s were, I noted that the very back bottom corner of the BC1s didn’t match.  They were probably around 0.2″ off in elevation!  What?!  Everything else looked so perfect . . . I wondered if I had actually cut these things wrong, but then recounted the countless times I held them next to each other and they were a perfect match.

Something was up!

After messing with one issue:  that I had simply clamped them slightly askew with the left-to-right clamp, I then also realized that my threaded bolt clamp was being a real PITA to dial in and was also causing issues.  I chucked the threaded squeeze clamp … literally!

All in all, I just couldn’t get the clamps to work.  I essentially did the closest thing to free handing it as possible, using one small clamp, a 2×4 piece and a drill for a weight.  With that, I was able to get it pretty darn close.

One issue that I had, that I referenced above, was that I made all my vertical reference markings only as long as the front of each BC1.  When I added flox fillets in the corner, guess what?!  Yep, all but the very back end of the line was obscured from my view!  So the multiple times I had to literally peel up the layups to check the marks just gummed up things even worse.

Of course, after much consternation and a liberal use of the highest grade military expletives, I finally got an acceptable layup out of it.  The time factor was not good though and extended my evening quite a bit.

Since my dream layup turned into the wrong kind of dream: a nightmare!  I decided to something more at my skill level . . .  ha!  Mainly because I had epoxy & flox left over, I went ahead and glassed in the upper draft plate.  I will say that I used scrap BID and didn’t prepreg it … wow, talk about a REAL nightmare!  I can’t imagine building a glass bird without using prepreg.  Clearly, I use it A LOT!

With the BC1 attachment & upper draft plate layups curing, I then went to work on first cleaning up all the peel ply boogers from the right side nose panel layup, then drilling out the bolt holes and attaching all the sidewall accouterments.  After the rudder cable bushing (AN111-3) and assorted Adel clamps were mounted, I then mounted the right rudder pedal.

Success!  The rudder pedals are official in! (yes, “IN,” but not complete since some rigging has to be accomplished).

Here’s another shot of the installed right side rudder/brake pedal.

And here’s a shot of the brake line Adel clamp (small one to left), the forward power cable big Adel clamp, the AN111-3 rudder cable bushing (immediate right of large Adel clamp).

I placed the brake line AN fittings on the brake line so I don’t get flamboozled working on something else and forget to put them on before flaring the line.  With not a lot of line to work with, I don’t want to make any silly mistakes here.

I pulled the peel ply on the BC1 layups while the glass was still in the green state.  It was a bit gummy, but definitely cured.  After razor cutting all the glass and cleaning the layups, I mocked it up on the existing F1-3 (Napster) bulkhead.

To get a better idea of what I was working with, and to handle an awkward component, I drilled a “toenail” hole in the top of each BC1 into the face of Napster.  This was of course after I spent a few minutes dialing in the exact location of the BC1s/F-7.75 mounting to Napster.

I then took my laser and shot it down the aircraft CL.  Ahh, not so good Grasshopper!  The CL of the F-7.75 BH was about 0.5″ to the left (right in the pic).

This is exactly why I wanted to work this process at that point in time.  With the BC1 layups very secure and strong, but still slightly flexible, I knew that I would be able to dial in the correct alignment between F-7.75 and the rest of the nose.

Here’s the alignment after I put some slight pressure on F-7.75 to the right for about 5 seconds.  [Note: I realize that the center hole in the F-7.75 bulkhead is off center.  A long time ago I had an original idea of bringing the point of the nose down a tad and since the heated pitot requires a significantly larger access hole anyway, I drilled it for a little R&D.  On this install I turned the bulkhead 90° which greatly exaggerated the hole’s original down offset into the present offset to the right . . . in case you were wondering.]

I then mounted the aft BC1 edges to Napster using 5-min epoxy.  This pic was after about 20 minutes of me applying pressure to the BC1s for a few minutes so that they would set correctly, then checking the alignment with the laser, then re-applying pressure for a few minutes, and also tweaking the nose a hair to the right.  Rinse & repeat.

I spent another 45 minutes or so ensuring that the F-7.75 & BC1 arms were attached well, and aligned correctIy, interspersed by collecting and cutting scrap BID pieces to make up 4 BID corner tapes to finalize the installation of the F-7.75 bulkhead.   I whipped up some epoxy with fast hardener and of course prepregged the corner BID tapes.

I laid up the corner BID tapes after applying flox fillets in the corners between the aft edge of each BC1 and the front face of Napster.

Here’s a shot after I pulled the prepreg plastic.

I then peel plied each corner tape layup.

As I was working the layup above, I would do a task or two (collect glass) then check the alignment, correct just a hair, then go back & do another task (cut glass) and then recheck the alignment to ensure it was maintaining at center.  It had a natural tendency to pull left, so I would overcorrect to the right and if I stood there long enough, I could slowly see it go back to the left.

To ensure it didn’t move on me I taped it up with duct tape.  However, I’m still going to do one final double check after I publish this blog post to ensure it’s still aligned properly.

Before I called it quits for the evening and headed upstairs, I pulled the peel ply from the nearly completely cured upper draft plate.  That layup is looking as good as it should (it will get hidden by the F4.1 plate, so I’m not really worried about aesthetics).

Tomorrow I’ll clean up the BC1/F-7.75 corner BID tape layups and then start work on cutting & shaping the foam pieces for the remainder of the nose.

I started today by trimming the sides of the Voltage Reg Click Bonds that were overhanging the edges of the F22 both on the top and the bottom.  I used a cutoff wheel on the Dremel tool and then followed up with the hard sanding board.

The top Click Bonds stuck out about 0.1″ above the F22 while the bottom Click Bonds overhung the bottom edge by about 0.2″.

Here’s the top F22 edge free of Click Bond overhangs.  [While writing up this log section I realized I didn’t get a pic from the other side… I’ll try to include one tomorrow].

I then started back on prepping the right side foam nose side wall for installing onto the existing airframe.

It took well over an hour to finalize the positions of the nutplate & RivNuts that I would be installing as mounting points for the rudder pedal cable bushing, and 3 Adel Clamp mounts: 1 for the brake line & 2 for the main power cables.

I then spent another 45 minutes on researching and figuring out exactly where the Atkinson Pitch Trim Actuator would get mounted.  It took a few iterations, and a few possible locations to lock in a final location (which of course happened to be what I had initially planned).

There are two distinct requirements that I’ll be meeting in prepping the right side wall for the pitch trim actuator.  1)  I’ll be laying up 4 plies of BID under the regular 3 plies of BID for the interior sidewall skin.  2)  The pad for the 4 plies of reinforcement BID (and thus the pitch trim actuator mounting base) will be in a depression that is angled at the front to make it (and, again, the pitch trim actuator) aligned more parallel with the CL of the airplane.  I’m already messing with the mount between the trim actuator arm and the elevator control tube by having to bring it farther forward about an inch more than what Vance calls for, but I’m not overly concerned with that since my buddy Marco made a clamp-style connector that is less intrusive and thus less stressful to the elevator control tube (e.g. no drilling a hole through the tube).  It also makes the actuator to control tube mounting point naturally lower since it’s a clamp style, which works better with my angles. Marco’s clamp is shown below.

With the design plan set for the pitch trim actuator mounting pad, I took the right side panel out back to router the major foam out of the depression area.  At the shallow end I routered  0.1″ deep.

And at the forward half of the depression I deepened the router cut to 0.2″.

I then took it back in the shop and sanded the bottom of the pitch trim actuator pad depression to level & smooth it out.

And sanded the edges to give the sides a nice radius for the glass to flow smoothly over.

I got into my glass cutting table to cut out the 3 pieces of 3.5″ x 7″ BID for the F22 corner reinforcement layup that will be one of the final steps when I lay up the right nose side panel.  I also cut 2 pieces of BID measuring a little over 6″ x 9″ for the pitch trim actuator pad, which I prepregged below.

I mixed up some epoxy with fast hardener and wetted out the 2-ply prepregged BID.

Although I only wet out 2 plies of BID, I’m actually cutting it in half to make for a 4-ply BID layup.  I know!  Clever huh?!

I first marked up the prepreg plastic, and then cut the perimeter.

I then cut down the diagonal line to make 2 pieces that were nearly identical.  Of course I then combined those two separate prepreg pieces to give me one 4-ply prepreg setup.

I had already mixed up the micro slurry before I finished marking & cutting the prepregged BID, so I used that to prep the foam in the pitch trim actuator mount depression.

I laid up the 4-ply BID reinforcement pad and used the top plastic to drive out all the air bubbles, getting it to lay down really well.I then pulled the plastic & peel plied the layup.

Here’s the same layup a couple hours later after I pulled the peel ply.

With the hardpoint nutplates & inserts floxed into place and the pitch trim mounting pad cured, I whipped up some epoxy with slow hardener and made some micro slurry out some of it.  I then micro’d all the foam surfaces of the inboard right side nose foam panel.

I did a combo style of layups on the right side panel.  I started with laying up only 2 plies of BID before mounting the side panel into the fuselage.  I still didn’t wet out the glass below the brake line channel, so after the foam side panel was in place I embedded the brake line in the channel with 4 spots of 5-min glue.  I held the brake line in place with toothpicks near each application of 5-min glue.

After the 5-min glue cured, I applied micropaste to the brake line channel to fill in the gaps between the brake line and the channel.  After I got the brake line channel squared away, and all the glass wetted out on the first 2 plies, I then laid up the 3rd and last ply of BID.

I think I mentioned this before, but I’ll point out again that normally I would only overlap the BID from the sidewall onto the floor, bulkheads, etc. the typical 1″ that would be provided by using your standard BID tape.  However, on the sidewall to floor plan I overlapped the BID by about 2″ in order to use the 3-plies of BID as not just the attachment mechanism for the sidewall, but also as a 3-ply reinforcement base for my rudder/brake pedals bringing the total to 5 plies of BID over each rudder pedal phenolic base.

Here’s a shot of the finished layup on the right side nose panel.  You can see that i had to leave a couple of sets of toothpicks in to keep the forward end of the brake line & its encompassing glass flat against the foam panel.

Besides the standard overlap of glass across F22 into the forward fuselage area, I also mounted a wedge of foam to serve as a ramp for the 2 large power wires transiting from the battery to the engine compartment.

Here’s another shot of the glassed right nose side panel.  You can see the triangular wedge piece at the front of the layup.  You can also see some of the pitch trim mounting depression as well.

Below is the 3-ply BID layup that gets glassed in the corner for reinforcement of the canard mounting bracket.  This is the final step for glassing in the nose side panel.

Tomorrow I’ll pull all the peel ply and clean up the ever-present peel ply goobers.  I’ll also drill out the myriad of nutplates and hard points, to include mounting the right rudder pedal.  From there I’ll start planning the mounting of the next (and last) bulkhead.

I was getting ready to head down to the shop today to start working on the project when UPS delivered my order of Click Bonds.

I ordered a set of four 10-32 Click Bonds for installing the EFII Fuel Boost Pump and another set of four 1/4-28 Click Bonds for installing the B&C Voltage Regulator to the aft side of F22.  The latter would be the first task of the day.

I first removed the Click Bond studs from their plastic installation housings.

I then test fitted them on the voltage reg.

I sanded the upper aft area of F22 in prep of mounting the voltage reg.  I then put together a prepreg setup with 2 full plies of BID and a 2″ strip over where the left and right pair of Click Bonds will be positioned.  In the prepreg setup I went ahead and covered the BID with peel ply.

I then wet out the prepregged BID with epoxy using fast hardener, cut a small hole in the peel ply where each Click Bond stud would stick through the BID, cut the prepregged BID to 3″ wide x 8.5″ long, and then attached the taped-up voltage reg to the prepreg setup.  I left the top piece of prepreg plastic on, so it remained between the back plate of the voltage reg, the peel ply and subsequent plies of BID.

I put a small mound of flox on each Click Bond face, added flox around the edge of each Click Bond for a transition, and then mounted the voltage reg, glass and peel ply assembly to the aft side of F22 with clamps.  I used just enough clamping pressure to keep the voltage reg in place and to firmly seat the Click Bonds.  I then worked the glass all around to ensure it was laid up well against the F22 surface.  Since there was a small gap between the Click Bond studs and backside of the voltage reg, I pressed popsicle sticks in-between the voltage reg and the glass.

As a point of note, the reason why I’m mounting the voltage reg at this point is simply due to the better access I have without the right sidewall in place.  I had originally wanted to accomplish this before either side wall was in place, although admittedly it wouldn’t have been that much more difficult to mount if the walls were in place.  But the access provided without the side wall in place did make the install easier, and makes the post cure glass trim a lot easier on the right side as compared to the left.

I then trimmed & cleaned up the left nose side wall layup.  Below you can see the 3-ply BID layup in the corner.  In addition, I drilled & cleaned the bolt holes to mount the left side rudder pedal.

I also mounted the rudder cable end AN111-3 bushing with a short AN3 bolt, and the Adel clamp forward of where the brake line bulkhead fitting will get glassed into place.

Here’s a shot of the external side of the left nose side wall glassed & floxed in place.

Here’s another shot of the corner 3-ply BID layup between F22 & left nose sidewall.  You can also see the embedded pitot line as well.

After cleaning up the left side wall and mounting the voltage reg, I then started working on the right nose side wall.  The right side has an extra element that must be dealt with: the 2 large power wires that traverse the fuselage from the battery back to the starter & firewall.  Since space is really tight in the nose, and especially along the sidewal adjacent to the rudder pedal, I really needed to figure out the placement of these power cables, mainly to know where to embed the Rivnuts for the Adel clamps.

I measured the diameter of the big power cable at .420″.  I then found a quick substitute for checking the spacing with an air house that measured .460″ in diameter, providing a bit of extra diameter for some wiggle room.

My initial placement of the pair of big power cables was about mid-point up of the sidewall depression, but in the end, due to spacing and clearance with the rudder pedal when fully depressed, I will have to run the cables about 1.5″ up from the floor pan.

Later in the evening I pulled the peel ply and razor trimmed the voltage reg Click Bond mount layup as best I could with the razor knife.  Tomorrow I’ll hit it with the Fein saw to clean up the lower edges of overhanging glass.  I’ll also have to grind down about 0.1″ of each Click Bond overhanging the top & bottom edges of F22.

After cleaning up the mounting base a bit, I temporarily remounted the voltage reg to check the fit & appearance.

Tomorrow I plan on really glassing the right side nose panel in place.

I started off today by knocking out the installation of Tee nuts into the mounting plate of my battery contactor.   I don’t usually ascribe to using Tee nuts as a common practice in my airplane building project, but since these bolts are metric M5 bolts, and furthermore. since I found these stainless steel Tee nuts at that Mom & Pop hardware store the other day, I said what the heck… let’s do something the really EZ way for once!

Obviously I used this scrap piece of Finnish Birch plywood when I was glassing the tabs for my main landing gear.  It’s still good, so I’m putting it to use.  I will be cutting the corners opposite the Tee nuts off at an angle to save some weight though.

I guess when my building compadres accuse me of cutting corners during this build, they’re right!!  haha!

Here’s a couple shots of the battery contactor mounted to its new base plate.

With my 5 minute battery contactor base drilling task completed, I then moved on to working on the nose side walls.  The first order of business today was to make the 2 triangular, angled foam wedges, one for each corner, that not only fills the small open gap that is created by the position of the side wall panels, but also provides some thickness to that area so that there’s actually foam (vs. air, as in a hole!) when the outer sides of the foam is sanded to shape.

I then mocked up my parking brake to get an idea of how my brake components will be mounted in the nose area.  As an aside, I’ve nailed down my brake line configuration so that I now know every item from A-to-Z on my brake system, including every piece, type & thickness of tubing down to every fitting.  I’ll go more into that later in another post.

Also, note the 2 nutplate assemblies, one each just aft of the foam wedges.  Each nutplate will allow the AN111-3 rudder cable bushing to be secured forward of the rudder pedal assembly as per the Rudder Pedal Installation Instructions (with the rudder pedal cable mounted to these bushing hard points it allows the rudder pedals to be moved without disconnecting the rudder cable, or having the hassle of reworking the length of the rudder cable when the rudder pedal is adjusted).

Today I’m actually going to follow the Davenport Plans and install the 1/4″ Nylaflow Pitot Tube by burying it in the left nose sidewall.  Well, bury may be a bit severe of a word, since I’ll merely route out a 1/4″ channel and run it in that.

The pitot tube height is based off the center of the next-to-be-mounted-bulkhead, F-7.75, so I mocked that up for a few minutes (not shown) to get the approximate center and then went 90° straight out from that center point.  I then drilled a small pilot hole on the outboard side of Napster that hit just the inboard edge of the nose sidewall foam, just aft of where I was drilling & on aft side of the F1-3 (Napster) bulkhead..

I then cut some of the fiberglass out that I had laid up a few weeks ago to protect the brake line that was exposed at the bottom corner edge of F22.   Well, I needed it to be just a couple inches lower at the brake line tube bend, so a few minutes cutting its glass sheath away and I had the angle that I wanted.

I’ll also be burying a good portion of this brake line in the Nose side wall as well, so I’ll be adding more Nylaflow as a protective cover over this brake line tubing.

Here’s a shot of the brake line at the F22 junction, and how I cut the glass out so I could get the line at the correct height and angle for embedding it into the left nose sidewall.

I then wrapped the NG30 nose box & cover with a plastic trash bag to keep any errant nasty stuff away from it.

It was then time to start on the nose.  I 5-min glued the pitot tube into its channel in 4 spots, and held it in place with toothpicks & nails.  I also 5-min glued one of my new best friends, the lowly RivNut, into place at the forward end of the nose side piece.  The RivNut is in line with the brake line and will secure it forward of the bulkhead mount that I’ll install later.

I then micro’d in both the pitot tube, and the rudder pedal cable nutplate assembly.

I then micro slurried the entire face of the left nose side panel.

I laid up the first of 3 plies of BID, keeping the edge glass and the glass just above the channel for the brake line dry.  I didn’t want it wet and pulling apart as I micro’d the brake line in place.

This was a tough, multi-faceted layup with a lot of moving parts.  Too many parts actually between dealing with embedding the pitot tube & the brake line, ensuring there was the correct 3-ply overlap onto the already embedded rudder pedal base, etc.  It got a bit frantic and hectic at times, and of course the physical work area is extremely limited.

Here’s a shot of the rudder pedal base, which now has 5 plies of BID on it so it’s pretty much officially installed.

Another shot of the left side nose panel layup.  Note the upper run is the pitot tube and the lower embedded run is the brake line, which comes into the nose all the way from the hellhole.

Here’s another shot of the embedded pitot tube and also the 3-ply BID layup in the top corner.  This BID is reinforcement for the canard mount.

I glassed in the pitot tube with about a 6″ pigtail into the what will be the avionics bay (i.e. the space behind the panel whilst one is sitting in the plane).

And here’s one more shot of the glassed left nose sidewall!  I may glass the other one like my buddy Marco did… which is glassing the entire side on the bench first and letting it cure, then installing it into the airframe with 2″ BID tapes.  Some may call that lazy, but I call it smart . . .  haha!  (I jest my friend!).  We’ll see.

Tomorrow I’ll clean up this install and check the quality of the layup.  My plan is to then install the right side nose side wall.

I started off today by removing the plastic & peel ply from ‘Ugly Layup #2’ on the aft screw posts for the NG30 aft cover mounting tabs.

I razor trimmed the glass & then sanded it some to clean it up.  A couple of trial runs mounting the cover & I was able to lock in the shapes & removed any obstacles that were keeping the cover from mounting correctly.  I also re-drilled the holes through the glass for screw access.

I then turned my sights on the diminutive forward NG30 cover.  I marked the edge at 0.3″ in width for trimming.

I then trimmed & sanded the forward NG30 cover and set it in place to see how it looked. Of course this was an iterative process so I set it in place umpteen times actually before this final pic.

And a shot from above.

I then started on the right nose side wall to get it cut to shape and in place for glassing.  The pic below shows the first cut, which is the bottom.  I had already sanded the aft edge to shape with my sanding board.

I then cut the front edge with the jig saw.

I then spent about a half hour with literally blood, sweat, and almost tears in sanding the dished out area on the right nose side wall.

I also scrounged up a wedge piece for the huge gap on the north side of my left side wall. You may have noticed I didn’t have this issue on the right side wall since I was very conservative with my angles starting out and slowly tweaked the angles to get it to fit nice and snug.

Again, here’s an outboard shot of the right sidewall.

And a shot of the nose with both sidewall pieces set in position.

I had planned on doing a bit more, but my buddy Greg stopped by for one last visit of 2015.  Since he won’t be back until early January, we hung out for a couple hours & I then called it a night.  Although admittedly, “calling it a night,” entailed another 2 hours looking at every facet of my brake line system to lock in the final design and get the parts I need on order.

I started today by cleaning up the aft NG30 cover screw posts after my ugly 3-ply BID layups last night, including pulling off all the protective tape surrounding the layups.

I’ll work to clean up these screw posts later and add a ply of BID on the front (outboard) sides of them.

Here’s a shot of the left side of the mounted NG30 aft cover with both the middle & aft pair of screws installed.  I’ll finalize installing the front pair of screws when I figure out exactly how the front NG30 cover & components will be installed (i.e. the parking brake).

Here’s a shot of the right side of the aft NG30 cover.  As you can see I started to drill out some of the holes for the Adel clamp nutplates.

With the NG30 cover screwed in place nice & tight I checked the longitudinal axis again. Somewhere I lost 0.1° to make my cover off by 0.1° in comparison to the longerons. Oh well, close enough, I’ll take it.

I then ran to a mom & pop neighborhood hardware store that my buddy Greg told me about during his Christmas tie project.  Again, although I should have my order in hand from ACS on Monday, I wanted to get the gear up/down warning microswitch in place if possible.  Well, I ran over to the hardware store and hit the mother load.  Not only did they have the microswitch screws that I needed, but a lot more hardware for mounting the electrical connectors, etc.

Here’s a shot of the installed gear up/down microswitch!  Yeah!!!

You may have noted that on one side the of AMP CPC connectors that I’m installing there’s a flange to mount the connector quasi-permanently to the whatever bracket, mount, etc. to which it will get mounted.  I wanted to mount the P1 connector with the flange on the inside of the NG30 cover so that it could be removed by simply unscrewing the opposite half of the P1 connector, then removing the 4 screws to allow the connector to be removed. Otherwise I would have to literally remove the wire connectors from the backside of the connector housing.

However, to mount the connector in the way I wanted,  I needed the connector mounting base with the phenolic insert to be thin enough to allow the outer side of the connector to screw on & lock into place.  Since the angled mounting base was about 0.060″ too thick, it meant I had to get busy sanding it down on both the inside and outside.  This took about 30 minutes all told, but I finally locked in the correct width.

I then reinstalled the cover and mounted the P1 & P2 connectors into place.  I also routed a bunch of the wires through a couple of mounted Adel clamps.  I also mocked up the AEX to check its spacing.  Admittedly, there’s still a lot of wires, but I’m really happy with the organization of all the wire runs.  I’ll of course still continue to tweak these wiring configurations, but it’s a good starting point.

Since I’ll be sending the AEX back to Jack for repair in the next few days I made up a jumper plug for the AEX side of the P2 plug & installed it, as you can see in the pic below, so that I can run the actuator motor.

Here are a couple of shots of the installed P1 connector.

Although I do have some more minor tasks to finish on the NG30 cover, I’m calling it completed since all the major build tasks are done.

Tomorrow will be a light build day, but I do plan on getting some work done on the electrical connector pinout diagrams.

I thought I’d start out today showing a couple things I just received for the build.  The first one is the shrink tube for making wire labels.

The other is the titanium metric M5 bolts and an M5 tap for mounting my battery contractor in the nose.

Back down in the shop I checked out the inner top cover layup from last night.  Looking good!

After ensuring the last layup was good, I started working on mounting the NG30 cover to the NG30 nose gear box.  Since the sides of my NG30 cover are basically just 3 plies of glass, I needed to add a spacer between the mounting tab and the inside of the NG30 cover sides.  I grabbed some scrap H45 Divinycell foam and cut to shape & dimensions the spacers for the NG30 cover mounting tabs.  As you can see below I left just enough on the outside of the foam to allow for the thickness of the cover side panel skin, which will result in the outer side skin being fairly close to flush & even with the side of the NG30.

Once I verified that the spacers were good on both the right & left side I then prepped the NG30 gear box to protect it all from the gooey, nasty sticky stuff.

I then used 5-min epoxy to mount the foam spacers to the cover mounting tabs.  I taped them and clamped them in place.

As the mounting tabs were curing I started working on the mounting holes for the P1 & P2 connectors.  The P1 connector will be located on the front of the NG30 cover, whereas the P2 connector will be located on the mounting tab located on the cover’s right side.  I started with the P2 connector that connects the AEX to the nose gear actuator main P1 connector.

After I finished drilling the main hole for the P2 connector I drilled the 4 holes for the mounting screws.  I then drilled the hole for the main P1 connector, starting with a small pilot hole that I drilled with a hand drill.

I then finished drilling the hole for the P1 connector.

With the foam spacers firmly epoxied to the cover mounting tabs it was time to attach the outboard sides of the spacers into the inboard side panels of the cover.  I placed pieces of blue foam in between the nose gear actuator motor and the NG30 cover mounting tabs to keep the tabs biased outboard and pressed firmly against the inner sides of the cover panels during the 5-min epoxy cure.

I whipped up some 5-min epoxy and slathered it onto the outboard sides of the foam spacers attached to the mounting tabs.  I then placed the cover into its normal position on the NG30 nose gear box.

Clearly I created a modern work of art masterpiece that I call, “Tower of Drills” . . . ha!  I clamped and weighed down the cover in place until it cured.  Now, even though I used 5-min glue to attach the mounting tabs & foam spacers to the NG30 cover, I went to dinner and let it cure for almost 2 hours.

Here’s a long shot.

Here are a couple shots of the the officially mounted NG30 cover!

And it’s still spot on as far as the longitudinal axis.

I then prepped the aft area for the mounting of the two nutplate assemblies embedded in foam, one each side.

I also prepped the aft area on the cover in order to mount the aft screw mounting tabs with 5-min epoxy, first the one on the left, then the one on the right.

Here’s another shot of the mounting of the aft right screw mounting tab (the tab is of course on the inside).

Here are the aft screw mounting tabs with the embedded nutplates glued in place with 5-min epoxy.  The one on the right (left in pic) is installed in the landscape vs profile mode due to the nutplate installed immediately above it.

I then glassed in the aft screw nutplates with 3-ply BID layups that turned out pretty ugly. They may need some work later on.

Here’s a shot of the glued-in-place middle mounting tabs.

And here are the middle mounting tabs glassed in place with 2 plies of BID.  I clearly had a total brain fart when I created the foam spacers without any forethought of the eventual glassing, since I didn’t angle the sides.  So I had to use a fair amount of dry micro to make a ramp around the tabs for the glass to lay down smoothly.  Beyond simply having to add a bunch of micro, the layup went smoothly.

Tomorrow my major goal is to finish all the remaining nitnoy things that need to be done to check the Aft NG30 Cover complete.  BTW, I intentionally did not work the front two screw mounts because I need to research more how that will possibly affect any future nose & gear build actions (i.e. gear strut cover install) as far as if they’ll be in the way and more of a hindrance now if I mount the nutplate assemblies on the top inside edge of each NG30 plate.