Ahh, tis the season!  The stormy season…

While last year a tropical storm moved up the east coast as Marco and I were ready to return from Rough River (thus an extra night at Mike Beasley’s to let the storm pass through), this year a storm hit pre-RR.  Again, nothing major except a lot of wind and rain.  More rain this time than wind.

So, it may not be surprising that I report that over half of my shop has a soggy floor, going on a couple days now. And as such, I’ve been focused on some tech refreshes (both personal and airplane) and checking out/developing my action camera mounting & use plan for the Long-EZ.

Pre-storm I did pull the peel ply from the bottom cowl aft baffle rib outrigger layups, and then marked and trimmed the newly made baffle ribs //slash// bottom cowl stiffener.

Here we have a couple of shots of the final-configured bottom cowl aft baffle ribs and stiffener with the bottom cowl installed.

Although my shop is still drying out, I was done being sidelined and pressed forward with a task that may not be critical in the initial airworthiness of this airplane, but one that’s been gnawing at me and that I wanted complete.  And that is correcting the looseness of the fit between the prop spinner and flow guide’s (“lampshade”) mounting flange that the spinner attaches to.

Many months ago I confirmed that my spinner was woefully lacking the correct number of plies when I was discussing with Dave Berenholtz cutting the spinner to mount over and around the prop blades.  He noted that he filled in the resulting notches just forward of the prop blades with carbon fiber plates he laid up using 10 plies of CF.  10 plies?!? I asked.  Why when the spinner is only 3 plies thick?  Well, apparently his Catto spinner is 10 plies at the mounting interface, while again mine is only 3 (as guesstimated with my micrometer measurements).

Since I needed to sand the inside edge to add 6 plies of carbon fiber inside the mounting interface (I’ll add more if and as required), I also wanted to get rid of some of “gob-a-goos” that were for some reason included with my Catto prop spinner.  Here is the first blob (pic 1) and then removed with the Dremel tool and sandpaper (pic 2).

And the same thing on gobagoo #2.  Thankfully that was all that remained from Catto’s build process.

With 6 plies of CF getting laid up, I stepped them with the first 2 plies going in being 1.5″ in width (or deep, maybe).  The second pair of plies going in were 1.25″ wide, while the last pair was 1″ wide.  The constant reference point was the opening edge of the spinner.

I used the high temp epoxy HTR-212 I have on hand, and peel plied the layup. I then set it aside to cure overnight.

My next task was also something I’ve been pondering over the last week.  I removed the engine starter and alternator cables and remounted them in a couple more configurations than I originally had them (with starter cable on top) before settling on this configuration below, which provides the best clearance between all cables, engine components and that ubiquitous fuel line.

To ensure the starter cable wouldn’t get gnawed through over time from the bottom cowling, I covered the cable with 2 pieces of cardboard zip-tied in place to act as a sleeve, to give me about 1/4″ thickness as reference.

I then mounted the bottom cowling and put my phone up into the right armpit air intake scoop and grabbed a few blind pics.  It may be hard to tell in this pic, but if I blow it up on my phone I can see definite good daylight between the inside bottom cowling and the padded starter cable.

I confirmed the gap by shoving my phone into the gap just near the #2 cylinder bottom spark plug to get this shot, also showing good clearance with my now settled starter and alternator cable runs/configuration.

And with all these build shenanigans under my belt, I called it a night.

Yep, pressing forward… ever so slowly!

I started off this morning by pulling the protective tape from the aft baffle skirt to get an idea of the gap and general look of the bottom cowl aft baffle ribs… not bad.  I’ll note that due to the tightness of my cowling, and thus the bare minimum gap between baffle and cowl, I have these carbon fiber ribs offset just a hair aft of the baffle skirt. In addition, I’ll remind you all that these baffle ribs also serve as my bottom cowl stiffener.

Another shot of the aft side 2-ply carbon fiber bottom cowl baffle rib layups, with peel ply and tape pulled, on the left side (pic 1) and the right side (pic 2).

I needed to do a little Dremel work and rigorous sanding on the front side of these new rib layups to get them prepped for the final front side layups, so I took the bottom cowling outside in front of the shop to knock that out.

Once back in the shop, I cut 2 plies of carbon fiber for each side, peel ply patches (due to the curved surface) and a small wedge of Lantor-Soric filler material (shown below) to help in the transition to the preexisting mini-bulkhead edges.

I then wet out and laid up the 2 plies of carbon fiber each side, and peel plied the layups, again using hi-temp HTR-212 epoxy just as I did the aft half layups.

I let the layups cure for a couple of hours before mounting the bottom cowling back onto the bird.

Just after I finished the layups I jumped on a sideline task that is definitely flying related, but not specifically build related.  Since I’ll be flying again soon, with my BFR (biennial flight review) on the near horizon, I thought I would get my ANR headphones configured.

You see, a couple of years ago as I was talking to my buddy Brian Ashton (twin-engine Long-EZ builder) in Alaska, he mentioned that he had just tried out his Sony noise-cancelling headphones with an aviation mic attachment.  I thought that was cool, but didn’t take much note of it, until a follow on conversation a few weeks later… where he explained his setup more thoroughly.

The kit is as follows: you take a pair of Bose or Sony non-aviation noise-cancelling headphones and marry them up to an ANR microphone kit that is sold by avee, a company out of Norway.  I bought the mic unit (top in pic), a standard GA jack cord, and a Bose LEMO jack cord (I have both LEMO and standard jacks in my bird).  I also separately bought a Bose LEMO to standard GA jack connector from ACS.

Oh, and they’ll personalize the case for you as well!

When I talked to Brian, he was using the Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones.  Being cheap and after watching reviews on YouTube where folks noted virtually no difference (much like my recent action camera purchase) between the models, I pulled the trigger on a set of like-new WH-1000XM3 headphones off of eBay for a fraction of the price.

Now, these headphones are known to occasionally need a battery replacement after long use (or no use) and mine was no different.   It also doesn’t help when you don’t take the time to really understand how to operate something (which I didn’t)… ahem, there may have been no real battery issue at all!  Anyway, I set them aside after thinking I needed to replace the battery and never got back to them.  Well, in trying to clear out the queue of all my electronics that are awaiting repair (I recently mentioned my MacBook Air battery replacement task) the time to bring this headphone kit online was now.

After maybe 30 minutes of research and prepping myself to change the battery (more involved then just installing AA’s), I found a nifty and pertinent video showing how to reset the headphones with simple timed button pushes.  Sure enough it worked, and after a half hour charge I spent the next few hours wearing the headphones, listening to music, etc. synced to my cell phone via Bluetooth.

With my headphone ops function test a success, I proceeded to perform the simple task of attaching a strip of magnets to the bottom of the left ear cup, just adjacent the 3.5mm jack port.  I first cleaned the adhesive magnet strip mounting area with an included alcohol wipe . . .

Then peeled off the protective backing off the adhesive magnet strip, which comes pre-mounted on the microphone assembly (pic 1), and then plugged the microphone assembly’s 3.5mm jack into the left ear cup, keeping the entire unit pressed firmly in place for 30 seconds (pic 2).

And Voila!  I now have a set of wireless Bluetooth noise-cancelling headphones AND a pair of ANR headphones for the plane.  Pretty cool!

With the magnets, clearly you can see that the microphone assembly can be removed, but only if you really want it to.  Otherwise it stays firmly attached to the headset.

Here’s a closer shot of the magnet strip on the left ear cup of the headphones.

And another shot here of the Sony headphones, the avee microphone assembly, avee Bose LEMO cord, and the separately purchased Bose LEMO-to-GA jack.  Obviously the cord plugs into the back of the microphone assembly.  There is also a volume knob on the microphone assembly as well.

I’ll note that when I was doing my original research, after Brian told me of this cool kit, that I saw a number of positive reviews from airline pilots using this setup.  Moreover, the fact that it cost about a 1/3 of what a pair of Bose ANR headsets cost, I was definitely curious.

I closed out the evening doing a number of hours of CAD modeling work on a few different Long-EZ components.  I’ll cover those over the next few days.  For now, I’m calling it another late night.

Moving onward!

I started out this morning attending my local EAA chapter’s monthly meeting, which turned out to be amazingly productive.

After having a nice post-breakfast chat with a local Grumman Tiger owner and my fellow canardian buddy, Guy, a group of us went over to the airport to help a fellow EAA’er, Joe, with his airworthiness inspection on his just-finished (and very nice!) RV-10.

At one point the DAR was discussing Joe’s flight test area, and after a couple of questions (and this pic) the DAR started discussing what my upcoming 40-hour fly off test area would be, since the Long-EZ is a bit faster than the RV-10.  After discussing the Airworthiness Cert inspection and paperwork process, I got the DAR’s business card… it’s great to have met face to face, discuss my bird and my build, and how to get ‘er in the air!

Moreover, a new EAA member is a new (to me anyway) CFI at the airport and we discussed doing my BFR soon… like I said, a very productive day!

By the time I got into the shop it was very late afternoon.  I spent a decent bit of time getting the contour of the lower cowling baffle rib’s “outriggers” (or ‘wings’) transferred over into cardboard jigs.  Which I then used as templates to cut out 2 plies of carbon fiber per side, and both inside and outside segments of peel ply.

With the tape on the cardboard jigs serving as mold release, I then taped them into place on the lower cowling.  After which, I mixed up some HTR-212 high temp epoxy and wet out the aft face of the jigs and the cowl surface.

I then wet out and laid up my inside pieces of peel ply, followed by a micro fillet in the corner, pretty much the entire length of the outrigger jigs.

And laid up 2 plies of carbon fiber per side.

And peel plied the carbon fiber layups.

The tricky part of this layup was letting it cure for a few hours (it was getting quite late) to allow the epoxy to get into its “green” state (just starting to really set up, but not totally cured) to allow me to pull off the cardboard jigs, trim the layups down a good bit (it was too hard to do that with the cardboard jigs in place, which was my initial plan).

I then set the jigs back in place and mounted the bottom cowling into place on the bird to allow the aft baffle ribs —which also serve as bottom cowl STIFFENERS— to cure with the bottom cowl in its mounted position.

After all that, I called it a night!

In prep for getting back into the cockpit in the not too distant future, plus my upcoming trip to Rough River in the back of Marco’s Long-EZ (JT), I dusted off the iPad and ensured my FlyQ EFB (“Poor Man’s Foreflight”) was up to date.  In doing so, I noticed that my iPad seemed to be going dead quicker than usual, so I found a video online that showed all the myriad of things to turn off to help conserve power.

In my fervor of getting my technology squared away, I’ve also had a few occasions over the past months to access my MacBook Air laptop to get a doc, pic, whatever off of it… just one problem: it’s been dead in the water for almost a year(?) now.  No big deal before, but it does have a good bit of info on it regarding my Long-EZ build that I don’t have on other computers.  Sooooo…. I took about 45 minutes to take it apart, remove the old “exploded” battery and find a decently cheap-but good one online.  Which I pulled the trigger on.

Out in the shop, after refreshing the desiccant in the spark plug desiccant holders, I swapped out the wing root aft heat shield screws for the final 316 stainless steel hex drive button head screws.  That actually took a good little bit to get done.

The next “quick kill” item on my list was to get the oil cooler return hose secured, since it is in the form of an arch and I don’t want it flopping around unsecured in the engine compartment.

After finding the correct size Adel clamps for the engine mount tube side and the oil cooler return hose, I then got busy modeling up a required cross-connect tab in Fusion 360 CAD.

I then post processed the newly modeled part and machined it out.  All detailed in this highly informative comparatively short video!

And here we are: oil cooler return hose securing task complete… Voila!

And just in time to shut down the shop at a decent point to take my girl out for a Friday date night.

Pressing forward… some days more than others!

Today I finished installing the aft wing root heat shields by getting right side K1000-6 platenuts riveted into place on the mounting tabs.  Again, I’ll final trim the glassed-in mounting tabs once I pull the engine off to gain better access to the tabs, and to ensure I don’t do any damage to anything on the engine.

Here we have the right wing root aft heat shield officially installed!

And here is a video I cobbled together showing a good bit of the effort that went into constructing and mounting these wing root aft heat shields.

I had to grab something off my shop work desk and was a little taken aback seeing this massive spider on the edge of the desk.  I guess he’s the new shop boss?!  It didn’t help that a few hours earlier as I was entering the shop a snake plopped down in the doorway as I swung the door open.  Critters abound everywhere here!

With the wing root aft heat shields officially installed I turned towards a task I started a few days ago: the final electrical cable runs in the engine compartment.  It took a bit over multiple days to dial in my exact plan, but I finally figured ‘er out.

Here I’m drilling out the center rivet on the engine’s aft baffle skirt to replace it with a button head screw (pic 1).  I then drilled out the rivet hole to 3/16″ (pic 2).

On the front, business side in this case, of the aft baffle skirt I installed the field wire (F-lead) and the thick #8 cable B-lead to the alternator.  I then secured those cables, as they began their trek forward, onto the front side of the aft baffle skirt via an Adel clamp.

Here we have the Adel-clamp-securing button head screw —which replaced the center rivet— now in the center position on the aft baffle skirt.

After a good bit more assessing/pondering/scheming/planning I also drilled a hole into the right engine side 7075 aluminum throttle cable bracket to add 2 Adel clamps to secure the alternator’s B-lead cable and F-lead wire in one Adel clamp, and the starter’s big yellow cable in the other.  I’m using 2 separate Adel clamps to allow me to remove the big yellow starter cable during engine removal while allowing the alternator cables to remain securely attached to the engine.

Moreover, if you look closely in the lower right corner you’ll see that I cut the F-lead wire, terminated a knife splice connector on the end, and then added more length of 18 AWG wire with the associated knife splice connector traversing the firewall into the hell hole.  This added 18 AWG length will get permanently spliced to the wire heading to the B&C voltage regulator in the nose once the firewall covering (Titanium sheet + Fiberfrax) is in place.  Having the knife splice connectors will allow me to disconnect the alternator’s F-lead during engine removal, and easily connect back together whilst remounting the engine.

Also in the lower right corner of the pic is a red Blue Sea threaded terminal, which is what the Alternator’s B-lead connects to for passing through the firewall, and will disconnect from during engine removal.

Pressing forward!

It’s been a very busy and very productive last couple of days and I’m finally getting around to getting all of it into a blog post.

I started off by test-engine turning a scrap piece of the 0.02″ thick 6061-0 aluminum sheet to ensure I wouldn’t destroy it by engine turning that thin of sheet, but it held up just fine.

So I engine turned the left wing root aft heat shield first.

I made a video of this whole wing root aft heat shield adventure (coming soon) and it shows a bit more details in there. That being said, I’ll note that leaving the freshly plasma cut wing root aft heat shields overnight, without cleaning off ALL of the water residue off left some permanent water marks, which was the final tip of the scales in my deciding to engine turn these parts.

Another shot of the left wing root heat shield engine turned.

I then engine turned the right wing root aft heat shield as well.  Obviously they both came out pretty spiffy (in my book at least).  Not shown here, but in the video, I then bent the forward 1.5″ tabs 90° on the metal brake.

Speaking of video, as part of my late night research I’ve been doing over the last couple of weeks specifically, I’ve included Action Cameras [often referred to generally just as “GoPro”s].  Being cheap and wanting the best bang for the buck, I ended up pulling the trigger on a dji Osmo Action 3 camera (the 4’s are out, but there’s not a whole lot of difference between them other than the 3 is about $100 less).

I used an older, but still small, Samsung video camera for this last video to see how well it works —that my very supporting/assisting Long-EZ build (ahem, for a time… as par usual!) girlfriend Gina bought me for a present.  Moreover, I wanted my action camera in hand since I plan on testing them out to possibly weld some RAM ball mounting points onto my roll bar before I do the final sanding, priming and painting of that.

I’ve also been pondering, assessing, researching and tweaking my under-strake latch lever for popping the topside strake storage hatch door.  I drew out a dimension  I thought was good for a lever handle, then drew out a design on a scrap spam mail envelope before modeling it up in Fusion 360.  I’m trying to design these with both ease of use/maintenance/install, ease of machining (out of 6061) and as lightweight as possible.  I then 3D printed it.

I transferred the dimension of the hatch lever into the design of each left and right bottom strake hatch lever assembly.  After some assessment, I realized I got the angle wrong on the right side (it’s not a near-perfect circle like the left side) and had to rework the rectangular lever opening.

I then tested out the general fit of the lever in the left side strake storage hatch lever bottom side strake insert… looking good.

And the same on the right side.  Note that I added a little depression on one edge to allow getting a finger grip onto the lever to pull it down.  It will be spring loaded as that is what will keep the 2 strikers securely into the tabs mounted on the inside of the actual hatch door.

I then rechecked the right side with the strake storage hatch door latch lever “installed.”

And then approximated the point where it would pop the spring-loaded top hatch door open.

I’ll note that besides the 45 minutes of putting my design on paper first, and then into Fusion 360 CAD, the above pics usually took about as much time as pulling the part off the 3D printer in the house, grabbing a pic of it, then taking it out to the shop and putting the parts into the strake, and grabbing another pic.  Most of the work was done on the 3D printer while I was in the shop working on the wing root aft heat shields… speaking of which!

I marked the vertical centerlines of the 5-ply wing root heat shield mounting tabs before securing the aft heat shields in place.  I then drilled 3/32″ holes into the heat shields and the mounting tabs, before securing them with Clecos.

Here we have all the mounting screw points clecoed on the left wing root aft heat shield (pic 1) and on the right (pic 2).

To keep the heat shields’ positioning as spot on as possible, I then drilled each mounting screw out to 1/8″ and secured the shields with the larger clecos.  Finally, I drilled out the holes with a 0.138″ diameter drill bit to allow installing #6 screws.

On the left side I installed all the K1000-6 platenuts with stainless steel cherry pop rivets, since with the engine installed I couldn’t get my solid rivet squeezer into place to do its job.  This is also why I’m leaving the final trim and finish of the 5-ply mounting tabs until after the engine is removed.  I had to trim the front edge of the front tabs (both left and right sides) to get the heat shields’ position spot on, when my Fein saw slipped a bit and nicked my oil cooler… nothing but a small cosmetic ding, but annoying nonetheless.

Here we have the left wing root aft heat shield engine turned, forward and aft tabs bent, and mounted into place.  Hoo-yah!  I’m calling this a significant success! (big smile)

I got the #6 mounting screw holes drilled out through the right wing root aft heat shield, but it was well past midnight and I was done for the evening… so I called it a night.

I plan on getting the K1000-6 platenuts installed on the right side tomorrow and press forward with other engine-related component installs as well.