A quick update here on the workshop progress over the last 2 days… still a decently long slog underway.

The weather has been and is forecasted to be cool but sunny for the next few more days. Then single days of forecasted good weather interspersed with rainy days. So I’m trying to get this roof knocked out as quickly as possible. The problem is that the days are SO short, and I run out of daylight at 5pm now.

So, here we go. Here’s the first panel off. The roof currently has 3 overlapping rows of panels, with each panel 2 feet wide. I’m replacing with 30′ long single panels –no overlaps from front to back– and 3 feet wide panels. Clearly fewer seams so less chance of water making it through. Since the pitch is much less than it should be for good rain runoff, I have to use a narrow strip of double-sided Butyl tape and screws every 24″ on the long seams.

Here you can see the 3 rows of panels, and I have the first couple of front-to-back strips (“columns”) removed here

I had planned on removing two of the 2′ front-to-back strips and with the 4′ width exposed then install a 3′ wide section. Remove and add across the roof….

Unfortunately, so many of the cross purlins boards are in such bad shape that I have to replace somewhere around 45-50% of them (still assessing). So I changed my plan and simply ripped off all the panels above the overhang/”carport.”

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If you look closely at the purlins in the middle area, next to the existing metal panels, you’ll see they’ve almost entirely rotted through.

Here’s a shot from below… btw, those purlins are 1x6s, which gives some perspective on the size of this roof.

Here we have a couple shots of the entire overhang area, or “carport,” deroofed.

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I then had to run down to a local builder supply to pick up a ton more wood than I had expected to for replacing primarily the purlins, and even adding to about 10% of the underlying joists to bolster them for strength. I will say that I’m definitely getting my money’s worth out of this utility trailer!

Again, since it gets dark so early and I can no longer work on the roof, I took the opportunity on evening #1 to wire up the 60 amp air compressor on/off switch. This switch will allow me to turn the air compressor off & on without having to open up the heavily insulated compressor closet door and reach into the flip the switch on the actual compressor.

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On evening #2 (tonight) I finally got around to opening up my not so cheap (over $100) framing nail gun refurbishment kit since my framer nailer is currently leaking air and inop.

In the left pic below we have the parts from the refurb kit out of the box for inventory. Also included for required tools on hand is my iPad with the requisite how-to video on refurbishing the nail gun. The model the guy covered was a Porter Cable nail gun, just not mine… but definitely close enough to get the job done.

The pic on the right shows what the problem was… besides just being old and worn (I bought the nail gun off of eBay for a good price, and have used the piss out of it since… so not surprising it needed some TLC after all these years) the air valve literally just came apart into a gazillion pieces, and looked like somebody had poured a cup full of rock salt inside my air gun. The old air valve is on the right, but should like the new one on the left. Note in the background all the pieces of the air valve both in the top gun housing and in the refurb kit plastic package where I started collecting these myriad of pieces. Moreover, the inside of the gun is soaked in lubricating oil, so these pieces stick wherever they happened to be…. meaning I had to physically remove every minute piece of plastic.

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Here’s my framing nailer broken down to about as far as it can be. I did actually remove the trigger and swap out the trigger valve for a new one as well.

After a couple of hours (mainly cleaning out all the plastic bits) I put ‘er all back together and took it out to the shop for a test fire. It was leaking around the top gasket so I really had to gorilla the top bolts SUPER tight (which they were when I removed them) and that did the trick.

So my framing nailer is back online, and just in time too because I’m gonna need this guy big time for nailing in all the new replacement purlins.

End of report!

Thought I’d provide an interlude to the myriad of shop upgrade posts I’ve been making to have a discussion on the whole purpose of upgrading the shop in the first place: my Long-EZ build!

First off, Stacey was here visiting from Greensboro over the Thanksgiving holiday, and while she was here I definitely wanted to have her try out the Oregon Aero back seat cores. If I had been thinking I would have grabbed some selfies of both of us in the bird, me in front and her in the back seat, but alas I wasn’t.

Stacey –being a professional photographer– was thinking and she grabbed some pics of me messing about with the plane. Here I am at the start of our seat testing venture opening up the canopy . . .

And then apparently thinking of all the shop tasks I have to do before I get back to building… only reason I can think of for looking so annoyed. Ha!

And below I was enjoying how nice the seat cores feel!

On a serious, note: I’m 5’11” . . . or maybe just a hair under that now. The law of unintended consequences reared its head as I was testing out the GIB seat cores. I realized that with the thigh support sumps built in, there’s only so far down you can go before you hit that hard stop.

You see, in the original Long-EZ you were sitting on a simple sloped seat… kind of like a banana shape. If you were taller you could merely scooch your behind lower/forward, bend your knees a bit more and get your head lower into the canopy. Again, with a “hard stop” literally keeping your butt from sliding lower into the airplane, it makes for a height restriction at just about my height (not planned btw). Sitting normally I have about an inch or two to spare above my head with the canopy closed.

So, at my height sitting on the thigh support has me in a more upright position than in a normal (stock) Long-EZ. This naturally puts my shoulders higher and thus more in between the longerons vs. underneath the longerons. You can still game the system in my back seat by scooching your behind further forward ON TOP of the thigh support, but this leaves an open air gap under your lower back. Ironically, I think I may need to have a small lumber pad to put in place for my taller pax!

Moving on . . .

A few days ago I was part of a 3-way FaceBook message going on between Mike Beasley, Marco and myself. I was working on the shop so was in total lurk mode as Mike and Marco discussed Mike’s placement of his autopilot pitch servo. At the start, Mike was considering putting it just forward of the stick at the base of the instrument panel. Marco adroitly pointed out that when he installed his AP pitch servo that it messed with his Whiskey Compass big time, and was the reason why he mounted the servo as reasonably far away from the panel as possible (just aft of the front seat).

Mike played around with Marco’s proposed pitch servo location and eventually made it fit… good for Mike and collaboration worked to save the day again.

However, this got me to thinking seriously about my Vertical Card Compass and it’s relatively close quarters with my AP pitch servo not even a foot’s distance away. Yep, my compass is stuffed in the upper right hand corner of the panel and the pitch servo is mounted forward of that on the right side wall.

This potential issue got me researching and resulted in a phone call to Trio Avionics to confer with Jerry and Chuck on the matter. I learned that the Trio autopilot servos are primarily made of aluminum, with some plastic in the mix as well… which may be different than GRT or Dynon AP servos. Moreover, both Chuck and Jerry fly Long-EZs with both Trio autopilots AND vertical card compasses mounted in their respective panels, and neither of them have had issues with negative servo influences on their compasses.

They did however of course recommend that I install both compass and pitch servo and test out my configuration. That being said, I’m fully expecting to have to mount the compass in the upper left hand corner in a swap-out with my MGL clock/timer.

As I was assessing the probable position swap of my clock/timer and compass to opposite sides, I noted the minimal amount of space I had for anything in the upper right corner of the panel. It was then that I remembered that after making the decision to mount the Trig TT22 transponder in the right outboard strake, that I had moved the panel positions of both the TruTrak ADI and the Vertical Card Compass inboard about 1/4″. I grabbed an older (not the latest) cardboard panel to test if I was remembering correctly: Yep, I was.

I then spent the next couple of days –when I had a moment to think– pondering my courses of action. First, I could easily just move the TruTrak ADI and the Vertical Card Compass back outboard to their original positions. But to be honest, I like the better symmetry of these instruments’ new positions and don’t want to change that.

Then, upon further inspection it appeared that the real problem for fitting the Trig TT22 transponder was the GRT serial adapter. I then considered making up a 25-pin DSub to 25-pin DSub cable to allow the serial adapter to be placed somewhere other than on the front jack physically connected to the transponder unit. But that would require A LOT of work and a good bit of money for all those D-Sub connectors.

Thus, my final course of action and the solution I plan to go with will be to simply build and install a 90° bracket to allow the Trig TT22 transponder unit to be mounted on the right side of the TriParagon’s top shelf. I still have to check final clearances, but so far this is my plan. In addition, if I ever swap out my TruTrak ADI in the future, the screw pattern I’ll use for the bracket mount to the top shelf will be the same as the transponder bracket… allowing me to mount the transponder unit back in place on the top shelf whenever space allows.

Don’t go anywhere… there’s more!

Over the past few days I’ve also been locating and collecting up all my tools, gadgets and consumables to allow me to build the wiring harness for the Trig TY91 COM2 radio (minus the 4 wires to the intercom). This will allow me to fire up the TY91 and have it connected to the GRT HXr EFIS so I can configure the COM2 control functions.

In addition to instituting a major switchology reconfiguration and doing a bunch of wiring diagram updates, I’ve also been taking a hard look at my ground busses and scrubbing those to make room for all the connections. I mention this because below is the WxWorx box power connections (left) included with the Trig TY91 COM2 harness (right). You may note that the ground wires of each component are combined together in, again, an effort to optimize my ground buss connections.

Over the next few days I will try to get my panel mockup repopulated and specifically the Trig TY91 COM2 radio connected and configured for control via the HXr EFIS. In addition, I do plan on firing up the WxWork system (although I don’t have a wx data subscription yet) to test out the Bluetooth connection with the Bendix/King AV8OR GPS unit.

I ran around this morning to pick up more supplies and then returned home as I awaited the delivery of my mini-split HVAC system… which arrived mid-afternoon.

I then stowed it away in the work shop and ran out to get even more supplies, including more OSB sheeting for the next segment of wall that I intended on insulating and covering.

My first task was to remove all the nails and an entire row of wire hooks installed on the top board, with many of them having ropes hanging down off of them.

And yes, the stains look pretty nasty on the lower portion of the walls. I’m not sure what material they used, but it seems to be holding up well even though they all look terrible… and as a point of note it’s not mold.

I then cut the 2″ thick foam pieces and inserted them in-between the wall purlins (boards). After the insulation was in place I simply installed three 4×8′ OSB panels in a row. I still have the very corner strip to finish, but this was a good stopping point for the evening . . . except…

I then spent a good 30 minutes prepping and then mounting my peg board —which survived the tornado, but looked like a pretzel when I found it in the hangar— on the wall. Actually, I only ensured it was level and then mounted just the top screws. I’ll get the lower screws installed later.

If the weather is good tomorrow I’ll spend a good amount of time prepping and then start on replacing the workshop roof panels. Once the roof is done (as much as I can do over the next few days…to a week) I’ll get back to installing the mini-split HVAC system and then the air compressor.