Ahh, and the proverbial one step back!  Although I only got about 5 hours of sleep today, strange things were afoot in the shop as I slumbered.  The last thing I did before going to bed was I checked this layup, and it looked it great.  It was a bit chilly last night so I left a heat lamp on the layup so as not to have to turn on the heat in the garage for a layup that was essentially cured (or so I thought).

Wanting to check out my masterpiece this morning I was of course taken aback when I saw a HUGE delam bubble running down the face of it.  Wow!  The only thing I can guess is that perhaps the pour foam was still off-gassing just a tad and over the hours it created a bubble.  Or maybe I just need to stop my shenanigans of combining heat lamps with fast hardener… might be just a bit too much for these layups to handle.  I’m going to try a mini experiment with that and not use heat lamps on fast hardener layups for a while and see if there’s a difference.

Ok, so here’s this hideous monstrosity of a delam . . .  Boo!  Hiss!  Argh!

It was a few hours before I got around to working on it, or even taking these pics and I swear it GREW!  Stand back folks, this ain’t your garden variety delam… this here is a Mojamma delam, and it requires extrication!  So I marked off the area for surgery.

And cut it out with my Fein saw….

This is what a close view of sheer disgust looks like!

So of course I had to cover it up… with 1-ply of BID of course.  That’s after sanding it and floxing the transitions.  I also injected a couple of smaller bubbles with pure epoxy off to the left (in the pic) of this delam,..where you may note the vampire bite marks.

With the freak show out of the way, I then turned my sights on getting the canard install much further along.  I taped up the edges of the canard “shelf” on the fuselage sides to protect it from micro.

I then whipped up thick micro and slathered the edges of each canard filler piece on the canard . . .(always gotta have at least one blurry pic!)

. . . and then mounted the canard on the fuselage.  As you can see with the right side below, the taped fuselage edge is pushing the micro into the blue foam edge of the canard filler pieces.  I wiped away the excess micro oozing out.

Here’s a shot of the left side with excess micro oozing out as well.

I cleaned that up.  Then I left the canard alone all evening to let the micro cure.

While the micro cured on the canard, I tackled an item that’s been on my Canard To-Do Sheet for quite some time.  I’ll be adding a piece of Spruce just aft of each longeron doubler to both strengthen it & to square it off to allow for a long AN3 bolt to get mounted through the longeron doubler & out F28 to hold the canard upper alignment tabs in place.

This mod seems to be quite common in the Cozy world, and I decided to do it for certain after assessing the geometry of how my canard is mounted.  You see, the stock plans elevator tubes has you cut out the notch for the elevator tube mainly aft & horizontally of the canard, which means the canard simply slides in forward to aft when mounting. Perfect for the use of the alignment pins sticking out of the F28 & longeron doubler.

But with my offsets –at least the way I have mine configured– the canard slides in from front to back, but because the way my fuselage sidewall is cut the canard goes over a bump and has a significant vertical motion that occurs when I’m installing it.  That’s why I currently have to completely remove the alignment pins and then reinsert them every time I take the canard on/off.

So I made 2 Spruce longeron doubler extension pieces, cutting them with my hand held jig saw.

I then cut 2-plies of glass to cover each one of these guys.

I sanded and prepped both sides.

I then applied a liberal amount of flox to ensure their was grip between flox and the right side longeron doubler extension.  I then laid up the right side 2-plies of BID & peel plied it (but no heat lamp!).

I then laid up the left side as well.

I then focused my efforts on prepping the elevators for mounting them back onto the canard.  I did a quick sanding & cleanup of the pour foam on the right inboard elevator edge.

I then wrapped 0.090″ of black electrical tape on the portion of the elevator torque tube offset that will traverse the fuselage sidewall.  The tape is for when I embed the torque tube offset FIRST into the bottom side of the canard filler piece.  Then, when that cures, I’ll do the same thing on the fuselage side.  These two new micro channels around the torque tube assembly will essentially act as a clamshell and close around the torque tube offset when the canard is mounted.  And with only about a 0.090″ gap, it should definitely help keep the cold air out!

Again, I did a quick sanding & cleanup of the pour foam on the left inboard elevator edge.

And did the Cozy Girrrls’ tape trick on the left side as well.

Once I got done prepping the elevators for tomorrow’s festivities, I then started cleaning up & got ready to close shop for the evening.  With my original micro of the evening cured, I pulled off the canard to reveal the new mating edges of the canard-mounted filler pieces.

I then pulled the tape off the fuselage and was pleased that I had no major issues with dried micro stuck somewhere that it’s not supposed to be!

I then checked the layup on the GIB seat/CS spar.  It looked good & quite well cured, so I pulled the peel ply to get a good look.

it honestly looks really good!  It may seem like it still has jagged edges and all, but as I’ve said before, that’s the blessing & curse of MGS, you can see everything.  So it may still look a bit delam’d, etc. but the new layup is fine.

Tomorrow I’ll continue with my canard & elevator antics. Specifically, I’ll clean up the micro on the filler pieces, and add some BID here & there.  My goal is to get the canard & elevator install knocked out over the next few days.

I started out today by trimming the inside edges of each elevator to get the gap between the inboard elevator edge and the fuselage sidewall to about 0.1″.  I had a discussion with my build buddy Marco earlier about these… specifically the fact that with the Cozy-style torque tube offsets, it really creates a bigger gap at the forward edge of the elevator where the elevator control tube bolts to the torque tube assembly flange.  Marco suggested an inboard fairing, which I had already been mulling over.  At one point I really liked how they looked, but after seeing the simplicity of the elevators against the sidewall, for some reason that really appeals to me.  Moreover, “simplicity” is the key word here in that I don’t want to add another 4-8 hours on the build messing with inboard fairings.  (Later in the evening I was emailing back & forth with my buddy Dave down in Australia …. he likes the fairings too!  It’s a conspiracy against me, I tell ya!  ha!)

Ok, so in the grand scheme of things my thought is that a 0.1 to 0.125″ gap is not going to bust the curb appeal of this bird.  In fact, by the time the inboard ply of BID and a little micro goes on the fuselage side for finishing, I suspect it will be very close to 0.1″ max of a gap.  So . . .

Set & match.

Done! And moving on!

(Sorry Marco & Dave … guess you guys will just have much more awesomer airplanes than me!)

Here’s the gap on the left side again.  Note how it is wider as it gets closer to that torque tube offset flange near the control tube.

And the right side.  Not as distinct of a gap near the torque tube offset flange.

Another view of the right side elevator gap.

Ok, first issue solved! (For now!).  I then moved on with figuring out how to seal the gaping hole on aft side of the canard when mounted into the fuselage.  Here I have Cozy-style torque tube offsets that operate concentrical & thus only require a round hole with a very small gap around the traversing tube (versus the SLOT that the stock elevator torque tubes require on the side of the fuselage), and yet immediately in front of it is still a huge open gap that must be filled in lest the cold air continue to spilleth into my craft.

I called Chrissy from the Cozy Girls since A) they make these parts, and B) they installed these parts on their Cozy.  She confirmed my idea that you simply create a small piece of “fuselage wall” on the aft side of the canard so that when the canard is removed in somewhat normal fashion, then the “false” wall piece comes off with the canard.  I asked this question of Dave B. down in OZ and he confirmed it with a simple diagram that is actually in the Cozy plans, that shows this small filler piece.

With a scant bit of knowledge in my brain, I trudged forward in order to defeat the evil dark forces that is COLD AIR spilling into the cockpit!  I collected a bunch of 3/4″ pieces of Divinycell foam but then quickly realized that while these side walls do contain 3/4″ pieces of Divinycell foam, they are certainly not 3/4″ thick after a fair amount of glass laid up upon them (more like 0.87″).  So, to get the right current thickness of the fuselage side wall and then also to save weight –since this is only really a plug to block air– I decided to use blue wing foam and cut/shape the starting block foam myself.

I started with the right side…

And first shaped the bottom angled portion and the aft vertical edge (aft is left in pic).

I then eyeballed it with some test fitting on the canard TE to take a good majority of the foam off the front side of it, where it mates to the canard TE.

Here’s the left side piece…

Initial fitting…

And more foam removed from the front side (of the left piece) in prep for final shaping.

I then finalized the shaping & fit of the canard aft filler pieces on the canard itself.  With these about 70-80% good on shape, I then remounted the canard . . .

And finalized the shaping & fitting of the canard filler pieces.  I’ll remove the circular area for the torque tube offset cross tube after I glass the filler pieces in place.

I then removed the canard and lightly Dremelled & sanded the finish off about 1″ outboard of each filler piece in prep for a 1-ply BID layup on each side of the respective filler pieces.

I then taped up the areas around the filler piece mounting locations for a little anti-gunk protection.

I then whipped up some micro and glued the pieces in place.

I taped the canard filler pieces in place and let them cure for a bit to allow them to better hold their position on the TE when I laid up a BID ply on each side.

As the micro was setting up I mixed up some pour foam and filled in the holes at the inboard end of each elevator (these are holes that I had to make to bolt the elevator tube to the outside torque tube offset connecting piece).  I also filled in the gap at the top of the GIB seat & the CS spar (pour foam pics shown below).

A bit later I whipped up some more epoxy & flox.  I created flox fillets in the corners of each filler piece & canard junction (pic below).  I then laid up 1 ply of BID on each side of each filler piece overlapping from a 1/2″ to 1″ onto the canard TE (sorry, I didn’t get a pic of the actual layup).

Since the garage was about 68°, I set up heat lamps on the filler piece layups and let it cure for a while as I sanded the GIB seat back top in prep for glass (again, pics below).

Here’s how my canard filler pieces came out.  They need a bit more tweaking on the fit & finish, but definitely not bad at all.  I’m really happy with how they turned out!

Here’s a shot of the pour foam in the inboard ends of the elevators.  Note the torque tube offset flanges that I discussed earlier… you can see them peaking out of the piles of foam.

Here’s the pour foam application on the back seat / spar junction where there was still a slight gap after I embedded a foam wedge/spacer in between the seat back & spar.

And a closeup shot of the pour foam…

I then sanded the entire foamed area and the glass areas that would receive BID tapes.

I then mixed up some epoxy, micro & flox.  I micro’d the fresh foam surfaces and then floxed some slightly uneven glass transitions (mainly from previous BID tape layups) towards the corners.

I then laid up three separate 2-ply BID tape segments: 2″ wide x 4″ long in each corner, and 2.25″ wide x 11.5″ long for the center piece.  Admittedly, the overlap of the center BID tape was only about 1/4″ over each of the outboard corner BID tapes, but I think that will be fine for this application.

By the time I finished peel plying this layup, the MGS epoxy with fast hardener I was using was getting very tacky.  Since the temps outside were dropping to the mid-40’s F, I went ahead and put a couple of heat lamps on the layup.  I then cleaned up, brought the wings a motorcycle back into the shop and then uploaded these pics to the site.  I then checked the layup well over an hour later and all looked good, so I took one of the heat lamps away & simply left the other one on to keep the layup above ~70° F overnight.

Tomorrow I’ll continue to work on the canard filler pieces, and try to get the micro inset around the torque tube offset cross tube that traverses the fuselage sidewall.

Below is the final results of yesterday’s efforts.  As you can see, the spacer pads are in place for the canard lift tabs.

You’ll quite often here me refer to the “sins of the past” in regards to the build coming back to haunt me in various ways.  Although, there’s an often number of times where a “mistake” turns out to actually be serendipitous in that it’s better for my specific build or better meets my requirements.  Case in point is when I cut the GIB seatback Spruce hard point LWX at the plans 35° on my saw, which in reality should have been 55° on my saw for a more acute angle.  When I lined everything up on the numbers, this is what created that small 0.15″ gap between the fuselage sidewall foam (underneath the CS spar) and LWY when I was mounting the canard.  It also resulted in there being a slight gap betwixt the GIB seat back and the face of the CS spar.  No worries though, since I actually want my GIB sitting more upright, and although this is a very minor difference in angles, the seat back is slightly more vertical than before.

Of course now I have a gap I have to contend with.  Again, no worries.  I just grabbed a long thin scrap piece of Divinycell foam and sanded to shape to fit in the channel between top seat back and the lower face of the CS Spar.

I then whipped up some micro and micro’d it in place.

Then let it cure.  There is actually a secondary gap between the aft side of the foam filler piece and the dip inward of the glass on the bottom edge of the race-track looking hole in the front of the CS Spar.  Again, I think this might turn out better since that edge can be a bit of a snake pit just waiting to bite unsuspecting forearms as your leaning forward, a bit off-balance either trying to stuff stuff into the spar for storage, or when holding a wrench while mounting the inboard wing attach bolt.  Thus, I will fill in the secondary channel with pour foam and then shape a smooth bull-nose type transition in prep for 2-plies of BID.

With the seat/CS spar spacer micro’d in and curing, I then set my sights on getting the elevators mounted to the canard with the canard mounted in place.  I started with the right side elevator, first checking the stainless steel hinge pin alignment to see why it was so incredibly difficult to get the hinge pin reinserted when mounting the elevator to the canard. My investigation proved fruitful in that I reconfirmed that my NC2 hinge brackets are very closely aligned, with the center NC2 being maybe 0.050″ higher than the other two.  The big issue was the hole in the canard swoosh tip.  It was misaligned with the very first, outboard NC2 hinge bracket and was causing a fair amount of friction & discontent.  Once I straightened out that outermost hinge pin hole in the canard swoosh tip, I really had a much easier time getting the elevator mounted.

I then set the canard with the right elevator attached onto the canard mounting “shelf” of the fuselage, but since the elevator offset actuator prevented the canard from seating onto the canard mounting shelf, I had to offset it so that the right lift tab was outboard of the right side fuselage (see pic below).  Understandable of course since my exact goal here was to get the rounded notch created in the fuselage sidewall specifically for the portion of the torque tube offset that will traverse from outside fuselage to inside.  This portion is the tube on the very upper left side of the pic below.  Since it was a couple inches away from the fuselage, I used my straight edged ruler and estimated the perimeter of the half-moon depression I needed to make on the fuselage’s canard mounting “shelf”, while of course adding in the extra 0.1″ spacing around the traversing tube as per plans.

[You may have noted that my CS11 weight is mounted a bit askew.  I’ll fix that later.]

I then moved the canard out of the way in prep of creating this small notch/depression in the fuselage sidewall.  I would like to point out that if you had ever wondered why I didn’t notch my top forward fuselage area as it shows in the plans (below) –with a much larger circular notch for the stock elevator torque tube configuration– it’s because with the Cozy-style torque tube offsets I knew that not much more sidewall beyond the canard “shelf” would need to be removed, which is of course exactly the case here.

I then used my “Fein” saw, razor knife and a round Perma-a-grit tool to create the clearance required in the sidewall for the right torque tube offset.

I set the canard & elevator back in place to see that I had plenty of clearance.

The fit between the inboard edge of the elevator needed trimming for the elevator to travel full up (but not full down), so I trimmed ‘er up.  As for the elevator-to-sidewall clearance spacing, the torque tube offsets are engineered so that the elevator torque tube attaches to the torque tube offset on the external side of the fuselage. Naturally, there is a bit more space required as compared to the original Long-EZ plans method of mounting the torque tube actuators internal to the fuselage.  In short, this means dialing in a 1/16″ gap between fuselage and the inboard edge of the elevator is difficult at best. My estimation is that it will end up being around a 1/8″ to 5/32″ gap when the plane is finished and flying.  No big deal, just a sideline affect of using the torque tube offsets.

In addition, the gap between the inboard edge of the elevator and the fuselage is really clearance measured when the elevator’s TE is at its uppermost position.  As you can see, the lower the TE of the elevator goes, the gap between inboard elevator and fuselage sidewall naturally gets wider (at least it does on this bird).

After taking the same steps on checking out the hinge pin on the left elevator, I then repeated the process of creating a rounded notch for the elevator torque tube offset on the left side of the fuselage.

Here’s a money shot with both elevators attached to the mounted canard!  A first for this bird!

Here’s the torque tube offset clearance on the left side.

Here’s a low angle shot that I took of the mounted elevators.

And a higher angle shot (excuse the mess, but there’s an airplane being built here! ha!)

And a shot of today’s work.  Not much material removed at all (thankfully!) and I’m very pleased with how little fuselage sidewall had to be removed for the offset actuators to fit into place.

Tomorrow I’ll continue my work on the elevators and the GIB seat back-to-CS spar intersection.

I started today by filing down & sanding the right CNL bushing that holds in the AN4 bolt for the right canard lift tab.  It was sticking out about 0.030″ past the surface of the F22 glass so I wanted to level it with that glass.  It took about 20 minutes, but I finally got it.

I measured the lift tabs on the canard to get the measurement for the BID pad that needed to go under the left side canard lift tab.  I cut 6 squares approximately 2″ x 2″ and then stacked them in sets of 2 for prepregging.

I then made up a template to use for cutting out the BID pads for the general shape of the lift tab, and to also mark where a hole needed to be made for the bolt to pass through.  I was originally thinking I might clamp the lift tab in place then drill the 1/4″ hole after it cured, but that was most likely problematic with a nutplate sitting in the way … Uh, hmmmm.  Maybe just a tad easier to start out with the bolt hole in place and then use the AN4 bolt as the clamp, since then it would be set at exactly the right place anyway!  (Sorry for the blurry pic…)

After wetting out the BID, I then used my template and marked up the 3 sets of 2-ply BID squares.

I then cut  them out.

And combined them to make one big prepreg set with 6 plies of BID.

I then laid up that BID on the left side canard mount CNL embedded in F22.

I added a bit of flox just to smooth it all out while the tab was under compression.

For the right side I merely added a bit of flox to take up any gap there might be.

I then mounted the canard & bolted it in place.  I measured the canard from the CS spar CL to each canard tip and then from each end of the CS spar to the each canard tip as well.  I was incredibly relieved that all the numbers were close to perfect.  Moreover, when I lined up on the extended CL of the fuselage, you can see in the pic below that the canard is about as perfectly aligned in relation to the CS spar as you can get.  And if the canard is lined up nicely on the spar, it should line up very well with the wings as well!

[Note: This is one reason I had planned to mount the canard when I did, to allow for getting out front and ensuring it was aligned…. I just didn’t account for having only 2 feet in front of the nose as I did on the side of my house.  So this is the first time I’ve got to step back and look at my mounted canard from the front & at a good distance.]

While the BID & flox pads under the canard lift tabs were curing, I marked the left GIB armrest to cut it at 2.1″ wide on each end (stock is 1.9″).

I then did the cut-fit-sand cycle for about 8-10 times before dialing in the fit of the left GIB armrest.

With the left GIB armrest good to go, and the BID on the canard mount still curing, I went ahead & mounted the hinge for the nose tool box in place, with 5 rivets each side.

Here’s a shot of the hinge mounted to the lower “box” side of the tool box.

I of course needed to trim down the tool box lid, which I did.

Once the lid was trimmed, I then riveted it to the hinge that was mounted to the tool box.  Below pics are shots of the aft and front sides of the tool box lid hinge.

And here’s two “Action Poses” . . . ha!

Finally, here’s a shot that shows a good portrayal of how it will look in the nose when opened for access.

Finally . . . I was having a text discussion with Marco and sent him the pic below.  Now, since I had to remove a bunch of F22 material on the top to level out the front edge, it never dawned on me that I might make it impossible to mount the voltage regulator . . . if the bottom of the canard was too close to the top F22 edge and prevented me from mounting the Voltage Regulator.

I went upstairs and grabbed the Voltage Regulator and then put it in place. It slid right in with no haggling.  Yay!

Tomorrow will be a light build day, but I will continue to work on the canard & elevators to finalize both those installs.

Today I started by checking last night’s layups on the GIB left inside armrest layup & the layup for the nose tool box lid.

I pulled the peel ply on the nose tool box lid layup and was glad to see that the layup looked good.

Here are few more shots of the tool box lid at different angles.

I then got to work on the final piece that needs to be glassed on the GIB left armrest extension.  I drew up what I wanted as the profile outline.

Then cut the foam & shaped it a bit.

I then sanded a nice round over on the lower edge and the adjoining glass to transition it nicely in prep for glass.

It took a bit of effort, and a few choice words to finally get the lid pried off the protective tape I had covered the top of the tool box with.  I needed to get the lid off so that I could consolidate my glassing efforts.

Here’s a shot of the big layups in action!  To the left you can see I have a ply of BID laid up on the front edge of the GIB left console.  In the middle I have a few prepreg setups ready to get laid up on the inside of the tool box.  In fact, after these layups, all the interior tool box layups are complete.

The shot below was taken a few hours later after I knife trimmed the internal tool box layups and pulled the peel ply.  I did a quick trim job on the tool box lid and wanted to see how it looked installed.

Below is the shot of the final glassed extension on the GIB left side armrest.  Yes, it looks a tad rough, but once it’s cleaned up and finished it will look stunningly normal! 

I do have some details on the nose tool box that I still need to work, but for the most part tomorrow I really do plan on starting back on the full-on canard & elevator install.