I started off today by heading to breakfast and building my plan for mounting the wings to the CS spar, the CS spar to the fuselage and then the canard to the fuselage.  Still many moving parts to work out, but I hope to have it all done before I head out to Rough River.

I also wrote out today’s task list on a 3×5 card for the initial steps on the Wheel Pants.  To reiterate, I’ll be prepping the wheel pants just up to the point of installing them, which I will then do after the plane has been flying for a while.  Not my idea of an optimized install, but as I said before, there’s just too high a chance of having to rework some of the wheel & axle geometry.  Thus, Wheel Pants install will wait!

My goal today was to get the gear pants sanded, split, widened with spare foam and then glassed.  As you’ll see, I met that goal on the front halves of the wheel pants, but alas, I will have to finish the aft side pants tomorrow.  If you missed why I’m making all this effort to widen what appears to be a perfectly good set of wheel pants, check out Wayne Hick’s explanation on his Cozy build site . . . none better.

I started out by getting a good idea of the center lines for both the vertical and horizontal planes.  After trimming the outside of the opening for any offending glass or epoxy goobers, I then set one side of the pant in between 2 squares.  I then pushed the squares in as far as they would go, ensuring that they too were in fact square to each other.  I then measured and marked the center on all 4 sides.  I then flipped the wheel pant half 180° around and did it again.

On the next forward wheel pant half I turned the center line finder assembly 90° so that I could more easily check the top and bottom center lines vs the sides.  Since I’ll be splitting this sucker down the middle, at this point probably better that I am more zeroed in on the top and bottom marks.

I proceeded to check the center lines on all 4 wheel pant halves, doing each one twice as described above to ensure that I had the correct marks.

Here are the bottom of the wheel pants.  The centerline mark is pretty much aligned with the mold seam of each wheel pant half.

However, the top sides tell a different story.  These are all off by about 0.15-0.2″ from mold seam, which intuitively one might call the center line.  Hmmmmm . . . .

In prepping the wheel pant halves for sanding, I didn’t want to lose my centerline mark on the nose, so I took my German saw and made a nick-mark into the nose of each wheel pant.

I then measured just a hair over an inch from the centerline all the way around the forward wheel pants to give me a 2″ wide swath to sand.

I then took the wheel pants outside and sanded the 2″ band around the centerline.

And then did the same for the aft wheel pant pieces.

I then brought all the wheel pants back into the shop, cleaned them up & wiped them down quickly to get all the sanding dust off of them.  I then ran some tape down the centerlines and marked the center cut line with a Sharpie.

Here are both aft wheel pant assemblies marked for cutting.

This is the “after” pic with the aft wheel pants cut down the centerline.  I left just the aft vertical spline in place just to make it easier (hopefully!) to glass in the widening wedge.

After a decent amount of sanding and using my Fein saw, I finally got these guys all split in two.

I then dug out some 1″ thick crap urethane foam I have and used that for the widening blocks.

And simply aligned the straight edge of the wheel pant along a straight side of the foam, then marked the foam about 1/4″ bigger than the wheel pant piece.

I then cut out the urethane foam widening pieces.

Here’s the first widening piece I cut for one of the aft wheel pants.

I then used a hot glue gun to attach the 1″ thick urethane foam widening piece into place onto the inboard side of the forward wheel pant.

Here’s the best close up shot I could get of the hot glue between the foam and wheel pant.

Here’s both forward wheel pants with their new 1″ thick widening piece mounted using hot glue.  I have to say that although the glues seemed slow in setting up, it worked like a champ!

Here’s another shot of the forward wheel pants with the 1″ thick widening piece in place.

I then took the halves outside and used a sanding block to shape the 1″ middle foam and contour it in.

I then cut out two pieces of BID off the cutting table measuring 32.5″ x 6.5″ for the 2-ply 3″ BID tapes that will go all the way around the front of these forward wheel pants.

In the pic below, I’ve already micro’d the urethane foam, but more importantly I was after the minor gaps between the foam and the wheel pants’ interior edge.  You can also see that I pre-pregged the BID and cut it to width & length.  I took this pic immediately before laying up the first BID tape.

Before I pulled off one side of the plastic on the 3″ wide BID tape, I marked the top plastic at 1-inch intervals across it so that I could line it up correctly over the 1″ wide widening foam.

Here are both front wheel pant parts with the 3″ wide 2-ply BID layup in place.

I had planned on peel plying all of it, but it really was a pain, and late, so I just did the tops sides and a little bit of the outer edges on the bottom side of one of the pants.

And here’s another shot of the front wheel pants with the 2-ply exterior widening layup in place!

Tomorrow I’ll work on the aft side wheel pants to get those exterior widening layups completed as well.

Ok.  Here’s the deal.  I have a lot of wood in my house!  Most of it I bought, but a fair amount came out of the shed from the house I just sold.  A familiar story lately, yes, but I had to get it out of that house post haste, so it ended up in my garage.

The pic below is the lumber I picked up to build my version of Marco’s “Straight Tower of Pisa” to mount my gear legs, wheels, etc.  But I didn’t use hardly any of it, so it sits in my pool room, unused.

Then there’s the sheets of wood below.  These are plain just getting in the way, I tell ya!  As you can see, I have to move sheets of wood just to pull my motorcycle out to enable me to work on the plane.

I decided enough is enough.  I needed more elbow space and there are two Long-EZ building-related wood projects I have in the hopper, so on Friday I decided that I would start work to get the wood cut for those, and then at a minimum build one them: the 3′ x 6′ electrical wiring harness plan table.  The other wood project is a to-scale mockup of the front seat and instrument panel up to and including F22.  I can then install whatever avionics and instruments I have on hand, configure wiring, confirm switchology and ergonomics, program the instruments needing it, and try out the fit and finish mocked up in a “simulator” to ensure all is good.  The wiring piece is huge too, since I’ll be able to determine wire lengths, routing and bundling.

The end goal was to kill two birds with one stone by getting these wood projects built, but more importantly at this point is to get that lumber out of the shop!

Back to the electrical wiring harness plan table… I hadn’t really been overly concerned about building one since I didn’t really have a place to put it.  But Friday morning I had an epiphany and realized that it would fit perfectly on the back wall of my master bedroom. And since I was also using a lot of ‘trash’ lumber, I decided to use some forest green paint I had bought a quart of to touch up the trim on the other house.  Since I had 98% of it left, why not?  It really did make all the disparate pieces of wood look much better, especially considering it was going into my bedroom (Yes, sacrifices must be made!).  I finished cutting the wood pieces for both the wiring harness table and my fuselage/panel simulator mockup Friday evening, and then quickly threw on one coat of that forest green paint.  I then hung out with my buddies Greg and LG for the rest of the evening.

On Saturday, I went down to Hampton to visit my buddy Greg and didn’t return until late Monday afternoon (today).  I had made a miscalculation on the length of the table previously, so I had to recut the 3 long pieces of wood seen in the pic below.  While I cut these pieces, I also got out my table saw and cut the base table top and then the white melamine table top.

Here’s a pic of the table frame being constructed.

And then assembled.

I then added the table top base material to add strength for the some what thin melamine.

I then added the melamine and secured it by screwing it the table base sheeting from below.  I’m happy with how the table came out, especially considering that this was all scrap wood that was literally doing nothing but getting in the way.  The table isn’t a beauty queen, but it appears to be definitely strong and functional enough to do the job.

Most importantly, with all that wood gone and out of the way, I don’t have to haul lumber out of the garage just to work on the plane.  (The sheets of wood on the left side of the pic are the sides of the fuselage/panel simulator).

With this task out of the way –and much more room to work in the garage– tomorrow I’ll start back on prepping the wheel pants for install.  In addition I’ll be researching EVERYTHING I can on best practices for drilling/installing the wings to the CS Spar, and then the CS spar & wings to the fuselage.

I started off today doing hours of research on the wheel pants installation.  I’m not sure what happened, but I compiled a bunch of info on wheel pants in a PowerPoint slide deck earlier this year and couldn’t find the darn thing!  I did go back and review Wayne Hick’s sage advice on his phenomenal web page: Chapter 9: Wheelpants and also Bernie Siu’s, Nate Mullins’, and Joe Coraggio’s sites for wheel pants install info.  I compiled a bunch of it into a doc and printed it off as my “Everything you needed to know about installing wheel pants” guide!

In fact, while reviewing Nate & Joe’s adventures on their recent (respective) finished flying Long-EZs it was then that I made the decision NOT to move forward with a full-on install of the wheel pants.  Why? Well, after a fair number of high-speed taxi tests and numerous landings both Nate & Joe have had significant tire wear issues.  Keeping Nate & Joe’s experiences in mind, I figure at some point I may very well need to modify the wheels’ camber in addition to possibly having to modify the toe-in.  If those issues do play out, then having hard mounted wheel pants would require a significant rework of the wheel pants.  Taking all this into account, I simply don’t feel that it’s prudent to move forward with the actual full-on wheel pants install.  However, I do want to lean far forward and be as prepared as possible when I do go to install the wheel pants so that the installation will be optimized, smooth and quick.

As I’ve stated before, I’ll be using the Vans axle nut that has a K1000-4 nutplate installed in the end of it specifically for mounting wheel pants.

As you can see in the pic above, the Matco axle nut has essentially a built-in washer at its base.  Thus, I cannot simply use the Vans axle nut as a replacement for the Matco axle nut (which it was designed to do).  If you look at Bernie Siu’s website you’ll see that the Matco wheels that he and Wayne use incorporate a separate washer underneath the axle nut, unlike my wheels.  The separate parts enabled Bernie to machine a lip on the Vans axle nut to keep the washer centered. Again,as you can see above, my version of the Matco wheel does not have a separate axle washer and nut, so doing what Bernie did is simply not an option.  However, cutting the Vans axle nut shorter to only 1″ in length (pic below), will allow me to mount the Vans axle nut over the Matco axle nut in the same manner that Wayne Hicks did.

While I had all the parts in front of me, I measured the tire valve stem distance from axle center line to locate a good mounting position for the spring-loaded valve stem hatch.

In pondering how to fix the Right side toe-in that points inboard just a tad too far, I considered using AN960-416L washers as shims on the forward axle bolts to kick the toe-in back out.

But that turned out to be a no-go, since these washers are a 0.030″ thick.  That would equate to over 0.3″ back outboard at the 24″ forward (of the axle) mark, in effect creating a toe-out vs. toe-in!  So I did the math and concluded that I actually need a 0.007″ shim, which would result in the right wheel’s toe-in very closely matching the left.

I removed the Right side axle bolts in prep for eventually installing shims on the forward 2 bolts.  In addition, I’m going to swap out the longer axle bolts for slightly shorter ones.

Another piece of information that I serendipitously discovered today concerns my instrument panel.  The other day when I cleaning up the shop I ran across the sheet of 0.090″ 6061-T6 aluminum that I used for the heat shields.  I quickly measured the instrument panel to see if I could use the remainder of this 6061 piece for the instrument panel (there’s enough), since it just seemed like a good thickness for the panel.  Well, lo & behold as I was researching wheel pants today, I saw on Nick Ugolini’s site the he specifically recommends using 0.090″ 6061-T6 aluminum for making an instrument panel!  Sold!  Say no more Nick, I will comply!!

Ok, finally, just as a historical record, I also filled up the nose wheel tire with air!

Tomorrow, I’ll be prepping the wheel pants and hopefully getting the first initial steps in to widen them by the 1″ I decided to widen them.  As I stated before, I’ll be getting all possible tasks on the wheel pants completed up to the point of actual install.

I started out today by updating my Master Project Build Schedule which I call my “Order of Battle.”  I figured I need to start with the master schedule to better detail what tasks that I am specifically going to do on my Chapter 9 To-Do sheet.  In doing so, I broke out the hell hole cover and RAM air scoop for a later date after other prerequisite tasks are completed.

I then set about to figure out this pesky toe-in issue that needs finalized.  I put the fuselage up on a fold out table vs. fuselage dolly so that I could get a clear shot of the CL & the front gear leg.

I started by leveling the longerons side-to-side.  I also clamped a board onto the table legs perpendicular to the fuselage and then positioned the fuselage so that the axles were set back from this board 24″.

I then removed the wheels/tires, brake disks and pads off of each axle.

At this point I needed to find the aircraft CL, so I shot a laser line which allowed me to check the toe-in of each wheel not just in comparison to each other, but to the CL as well. I took the pic below a little off center, that’s why the line seems a bit askew.

I then clamped a 24″ square to each side and checked the toe-in.  The plans say that the max toe in delta between the “B” measurement (at the axles, or 0 inches) and the “A” measurement (at 24″ forward of the axles) should be between 0.2 and 0.45 inches.  Right now, I’m sitting at 0.62 inches, with my right wheel toed-in 0.08″ more than my left.  If I can get the right wheel toe-in the same as the left, then at 0.54″ I’ll be happy and call it a day.  This may be a bit more than Burt called for in the plans, but then again, my aircraft weight is a bit more than what Burt advised as well.  One other thought is that I’m not going to jump through a lot of hoops now until I start doing some high speed taxi tests & a few landings, at which point I’ll tweak what needs tweaking!

Now, a few more figures.  Before I took the wheels off I measured from the front center of each tire near the ground to the large nut on the nose wheel fork.  Each side came out very close to 110″.  Then, after I removed the wheels I also measured from the bottom of each axle to the 6-foot level I had across the longerons, with each side measuring close to exactly 48.5 inches.  I then measured from the aft side of each of the inside, top-forward axle mounting bolt to the fuselage CL at the back edge of the fuselage bottom: Right side 34.32″ and left side 34.25″.  I also checked the dip angle of each axle hanging free, both came out to 12.4°.  Finally, with the longerons level I laid the long level across the squares as close to the gear legs as possible: perfectly level as well!

So . . .

Interestingly, when I checked the distance between the end of each axle, straight out perpendicular to the fuselage, I kept coming up with the left side axle end being 0.7″ closer to the fuselage than the right side!  I did this a number of times, in a number of different fashions, and each time it told the same story.  Very odd!  The only correlating data that helps support this –that I didn’t mention above– is that through my “A” & “B” measurements for the toe-in, I again measured that my left AXLE is 0.33″ closer to the centerline than is my right.  This actually makes some sense, because I mistakenly added nearly 0.2″ more BID to the right side gear leg due to my misID’ing the CL when the fuselage was upside down and I read the wrong mark on the freshly extended firewall.

My conclusion is that I MAY add a spacer to help clean some of this up.  I talked to my buddy Marco and he advised to leave it and press on (good advice), but a big factor in this decision will be the affect it has on the asymmetry between the wheel pants.  I’ll being doing a fair number of measurements tomorrow on those in prep of installing the wheel pants.  In short, more to follow on this.

In other news, I was able to trim the offending right heat shield on the aft side where it was barely touching the brake caliper (actually visible in last pic above).  I also topped off the tire pressure raising it to the recommended 70 PSI from the 50 PSI I had filled them up to (actually, after 6 months, both tires were down to 30 PSI each).

Today I got my Trio Pro Pilot autopilot pitch servo back from Chuck at Trio Avionics.  As he said he was going to do he upgraded my pitch servo with the Auto Trim feature.  And in short order too!

Here’s the pitch servo before I sent it to Trio.  Note that there’s only 4 wires coming out of the servo.

And here’s the pitch servo after the Auto Trim feature was added.  Note that there are now 6 wires coming out of the servo, the 2 extra obviously being for the Auto Trim feature.

As an aside to this story, the US Postal Service gets a ding (pardon the pun) against their service in my book, considering that as overpacked as I had that servo in the box that Trio had sent out my autopilot control head to me, the Post Office still managed to crush the box and damage the bottom plate of the servo!  Luckily there was not such damage on the return trip.  Here’s the damaged bottom plate that Chuck threw in the box when he shipped the servo back to me:

Still, no worries and all is good.  One more item off the list and I can move on to the actual build . . . SOON!  (I promise!)

Quick update in that today I sent the Trio Pro Pilot autopilot pitch servo to Trio Avionics to have the Auto Trim feature added to the servo.  As I posted before, I talked to Chuck and he will upgrade it for me shortly after they all get back from Oshkosh, so I wanted to time my shipment so that the servo arrives Trio right about the time he gets back from Oshkosh.

One more thing off the list!