Today I started off by doing some research as I watched some football.  The first thing I had on my list to figure out was the exact configuration of my brake line components.  I did some poking around on the Matco website to figure out what components go where for my brake system.  I found the information I was looking for and was able to tailor it to the brake system components I have on hand.

Again, being a true Neanderthal and PowerPoint Ranger, I jimmied up a quick PowerPoint slide to display what was going on with the brake system.  One reason I was checking out my brake system is because I wanted to confirm what goes where in the nose so I can plan better as I build the NG30 aft cover, and will soon glass in the nose side walls.

I also spent about an hour doing some digging around online for information on my electrical system.  Really, I was focusing on a lot of the little bits n’ pieces that will be required to finalize the mounting of various stuff in the nose area, such as Adel clamps, and hardware to mount those Adel clamps: screws, nuts, bolts, washers, etc.

I also ordered two different sizes of heat shrink tubing for my shrink wrap label maker.  Now I have at least the first round of wire labeling for my wires ranging from 4AWG to 22 AWG.

I also updated my nose component diagram again and included it here.

I then headed out to the shop to razor cut the edges of the NG30 cover side panels.  Here’s the left one after I mocked it up on the NG30.

And here’s both trimmed side panels mocked up.

A side view of the NG30 cover side panels.

I then spent a few minutes figuring out what foam was going to get cut away & which foam would stay.  Here’s the marked up left NG30 cover side showing the foam cut lines.

Here’s the final foam trim for the left NG30 aft cover side panel.  Out of curiosity I weighed this side panel and it came in well under 1 oz.

I then double-checked the actuator motor housing clearance with it back on top of the left NG30.

Here’s a front view of the same.

I then cut out the 1/4″ front foam panel and the front top corner foam piece.  Below is a shot of the pieces mocked up to ensure that they fit.

I then attached these foam pieces to the left side panel using 5-min glue.

Piece by piece, I cut and then glued the top and aft blue foam panels into place on the left NG30 side panel.  I really focused on ensuring that these glued-in panels were truly perpendicular to the side panel.  Note that I intentionally cut the top front corner piece oversized to allow for sanding it down to a curve that’s “pleasing in shape” …. ha!

Here’s a shot of the NG30 aft cover after I glued in all the center foam panels & pieces.

And an aft side view.

After sanding the foam & glass edges to shape, I mocked up the cover on the NG30 nose gear box.

I grabbed the AEX box and put it in its spot to check how it fits.  Spacing looks good!

As I took a break for dinner, I was thinking about the front of the NG30 aft cover and had a mini epiphany.  I wasn’t sold on the straight horizontal positioning of the nose gear’s P1 connector.  I doubled-checked it when I got down to the shop and sure enough, the P1 connector would fair much better if it was positioned at an angle vs attached straight through the front panel.  Although I knew it would be a bit more work, I wanted to optimize the nose gear actuator’s P1 Amp/CPC connector’s fit into the NG30 cover.

I drew out the plan on a piece of cardboard, then transferred that to another piece of cardboard to make a template out of it — which looked like nothing more than an “S” if you  wrote it without any curves (a 3-lined zig-zag).  I transposed the template markings to the side of the cover.

I needed to make what essentially would end up being a male mold (lower) and a female mold (upper) in the front face of the cover for the BID to end up curing in the correct shape.  I made the front angled panel piece (lower/male) to match the profile of the template and markings on the side of the NG30 cover.  With that piece completed, it was then time to figure out how make the angled pocket (upper/female) to finish off the angled mount for the P1 connector.  I ended up adding an oversized chunk of foam on the back side of the front foam panel piece on the inside of the cover.  I 5-min glued it in place at the same time I glued the front “ramp” (male) piece in place, and stood there holding the two in place for about 5 minutes (what a coincidence!) until the epoxy set up.

Now, I have been contemplating how exactly to go about glassing the NG30 aft cover.  I wanted to get a good glass overlap, perhaps even an entire piece of BID over all of it, but the cured 5-min glue and the edges were being amazingly stubborn as I toyed with radiusing the corners.  I will say that I really do like the look of the sharp square corners, but I don’t like the idea of digging around in the confined nose space and smacking my arm on that sharp corner.  Oh, well, who cares how it functions as long as it looks awesome!  haha!

I mounted the NG30 aft cover assembly onto a 2×4 to ensure that this incredibly light assembly didn’t get away from me as I was glassing it.

I then cut a small trench along the corner edges and cleaned them up in prep for Flocro.

I mixed up some epoxy with fast hardener and then whipped up some Flocro with about 60% Micro & 40% Flox.  I used Flocro to keep it light but still have good strength in the corners.  I applied the Flocro along the edges of the foam in the mini wedge-shaped trenches that I had just created to make my “Flocro Corners.”

I then laid up 2-plies of BID on all but the very aft area of the center piece of the NG30 cover.  I had meant to take the layup farther aft, but the connector mount area took up a bit more glass than I thought.

I peel plied the entire layup since I’ll probably add one more ply of BID to this center section area.  I may even still radius the corners a bit and layup BID overlapping from the sides over onto the top & front center faces.

Here’s a shot of the aft side of the layup.

And another shot of the majority of the layup (there’s about a 1.5″ strip overlapping onto the angled panel that dives down into the notch for the AEX… shown in above pic).

Tomorrow I’ll work to finish up the myriad of little tasks that need to be completed to finish up this NG30 cover.  I estimate that I’ll finish this cover either Tuesday or Wednesday.

I started off today by testing the gear strut’s up & down travel limits.  To do this I clamped the NG4 bracket to the top of the gear strut with 2 “C” clamps.

Although a little difficult to see in this pic, the clearance aft of the nose wheel to the instrument panel is about 0.2″.

I also marked & sanded down the sides of the F22 gear strut channel.  I sanded about .06″ off the right side (left in the pic) and about .02″ on the left side to widen the channel just a bit more since there was some rub marks on the gear strut.

To figure out where the nose wheel should be in comparison to the fuselage, I clamped a 6′ level to fuselage aligned with F22 to essentially carry the F22 line down to the floor.  I clamped the level on the aft edge so that the level was perpendicular to the fuselage centerline (and not flat against the inward curving nose portion at F22…this made for a gap between the front inside edge of the level and the fuselage sidewall.  The back inside edge was flush with the fuselage side).

I then used a square to check the relationship between the nose wheel axle and F22.

According to the Long-EZ plans the axle should be at Fuselage Station: FS 17, so 5″ forward of F22.  It took me 3 adjustments of the down travel microswitch to get the axle moved forward to FS 17.

A close up showing square markings and the nose wheel axle 5″ forward of F22, making the axle location at FS 17.  I was actually shooting for a measurement of 5.2″ to 5.5″ (FS 16.5 to FS 16.8) on the square to make allowance for the weight of the aircraft compressing some of the natural gear spring action when on all its gears.

Here’s a shot of nose gear & wheel down at the correct level.

I then removed the gear strut to attach the NG3 & NG4 brackets.  Although plans calls for mounting the NG3 bracket at 6.71″ ± 0.05″ from the NG6B pivot point, after setting the microswitches for the up/down limits the measurement between NG6B and NG3 came out to almost exactly 6.3″.

I would have actually moved the NG3/4 bracket a little higher on the gear strut, but I wanted to keep NG4 inner bracket on the thicker, straighter part of the gear strut and minimize any weird, undue stress to the gear strut that might result from mounting it higher and at a narrower area.

The pic below shows the sanding that I did on the NG4 bracket before floxing it into place. Also, although hard to see, is the cardboard template I made of the inboard side of the NG4 bracket.  I’m hoping that I can use this to help drill the hole in the outer NG3 bracket, which comes un-drilled.

Here’s some better shots of the cardboard template.

Now, the original plans state that 2-3 plies of BID should be wrapped around the gear strut before floxing the NG3 & NG4 brackets into place.  However, the reason for this is simply because the original gear strut –as pointed out in the plans– was too narrow and the BID needed to be added to fill the gap.

Conversely, according to the installation instructions that came with the nose gear actuator, Jack mentions nothing about adding BID and simply says to flox the NG3 & NG4 brackets into place.  The NG3 definitely fit tightly enough that it could have easily been mounted with flox alone, but I like the idea of a ply of BID above and below the brackets to form a sort of hour glass configuration, if you will, to help lock the bracket into position.  It may just be in my head, but for a bit more peace of mind I decided to layup 1 ply of BID under the NG3 & NG4 brackets.

To add the 1 ply of BID, I had to sand the gear strut in the area that the NG3 bracket would be mounted.  I also prepped the rest of the area to ensure it was ready for mounting the brackets.

After laying up my requisite 1-ply of BID, I then mixed up some flox with fast hardener.  I applied the flox to the inboard areas of the NG3 bracket.

I mounted the NG3 outer bracket and the NG4 inner bracket with 2 “C” clamps.  I also added another clamp (as per plans) to bring the sides of the NG3 bracket in at the top side of the bracket.

Here’s another shot of the NG3/NG4 bracket mounting to the nose gear strut.

As the NG3 & NG4 brackets cured I sat down in front of the TV and cut up a bunch of 1/16″ phenolic pieces to make up some K1000-3 nutplate assemblies.  Eight of the 11 nutplate assemblies measure 1″ x 0.7″.  I’ll be using these for the electrical mounting plate that will be mounted just aft of the F22 center strut.  A couple of these will be used for the rudder cable hard points as well.  Finally, I’ll also be using a few of these to mount the NG30 cover.

I also made up a double K1000-3 nutplate assembly for the Matco parking brake.

Here’s a side shot of the parking brake nutplate assembly with AN3-11A bolts installed.

Tomorrow I’ll be glassing in nutplate assemblies for the electrical mounting plate aft of the F22 center strut.  I want to get these in before I glass in the nose sidewalls so that I have much easier access.  I also plan on working on the NG30 cover, again since I’ll have more access with the nose sidewalls not yet mounted.

I started out today by cleaning up the layups from last night.  I pulled the peel ply, razor trimmed & sanded the edges.

Then it was time for round two.  I cut out the pieces of BID for the other side of the draft plate and for the battery mounting tube 5-ply reinforcement pads.  I didn’t glass the face of  F4.1 since that occurs when it gets mounted to the aft side of the NG30 upright arms.

I then mixed up some epoxy with slow hardener and wetted out the BID.

The layups followed the same flow as yesterday.  Since I wasn’t in a hurry for this layup to cure I didn’t use a heat lamp… thus I went ahead and weighed it down with a gallon of paint.

Later in the evening Jack Wilhelmson returned my call.  After telling him the symptoms, he diagnosed the problem as me mixing up some wires on the switch side of the AEX P2 connector.  Sure enough, after we got off the phone I checked the wiring and had wired up the connector in the mirror image of how it was supposed to be.

Thinking that I had indeed found the problem, and then remedied it, I wired it all back up. It just so happened that the last step was to connect the AEX hot power wire to the battery.  Well, when I did I was met with a distinct & resounding “POP” sound.  Initially, I thought (and hoped) it was the 5-amp inline fuse that sounded off.  But alas, it was something on the AEX board.  I couldn’t see any physical damage but when I cracked the case I certainly could tell that I had let the smoke out of one the components by the smell.

Ok, so during our discussion Jack had told me that if no AEX unit is used then pins 5 & 6 on the P2 connector require a jumper across them.  I disconnected the AEX and then rigged up a jumper across pins 5 & 6.  I rechecked the rest of wiring, connected power and then hit the up switch.

Nothing.

It’s late in the evening now so I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to give Jack a call back and confirm both the AEX status and how to fix the persistent issue with the nose gear actuator wiring.

Once I get the nose gear actuator running correctly I’ll mount the motor into the NG30 gear box and then get the gear strut attached to the motor.

I started out today by adding micro into the routed beds I made for the phenolic rudder pedal bases.

I then spread a fine coat of epoxy on the bottom side of the pedal base and mounted it in the floor pan.  I also added a micro fillet in the corners around the perimeter of the floor pan.

The last step I performed when I was laying up the floorpans was to add a 3.5″ wide and 2.5″ high 2-ply BID layup between the aft bottom of the F22 center post and the fuselage floor.

Here’s a shot of the glassed and peel plied floor pan.

To ensure that each embedded rudder pedal base was perfectly level, I taped up a couple pieces of scrap wood with packing tape and then weighed them down over the rudder pedal bases.

Here’s a shot of the weighed down rudder pedal bases.

While the floor pan layups cured I started back to work on the nose gear electrical system to finalize the conversion of the connectors to AMP CPCs.  I finalized converting the switch side (vs motor side) main connector P1 while concurrently cleaning up the wiring by zip tying the wiring.  I also cut all the terminated wires to the same length.

Here’s a shot of the P1 connector (motor) and P2 connector (AEX) connected together.

After a good 3-4 hours of cure time under a heat lamp, I pulled the weight off the rudder pedal base, razor trimmed the overhanging side glass and pulled the peel ply.  I also spent a good amount of time cleaning up all the peel ply goobers as well.

I set the heat lamp up on the other side and ended working another 3-4 hours on the nose gear electrical connectors before cleaning the right side.  I still have to clean up all the peel ply boogers, but I’m calling it a night.

Tomorrow I’ll test out the nose gear actuator with the new connectors.  I’ll also start working to finish the nose side walls.  And if all goes well, I may even get the gear strut connected to the actuator motor inside the gear box.

I started off today by marking up the area on the floor pans that gets dished out.  At this point, it was just for planning purposes since my main goal for today was to figure out the location to mount the rudder/brake pedals.  Once I figured out where the rudder pedals would go, I could then finish dishing out the floor pans and prep them for install.

I also did the final mark up on the side panels that go between F22 & Napster.

I then sanded the aft end of the floor pans to a 10° angle.

And cut & trimmed the left side panel (not pictured).  Although I widened my fuselage 1.4″ at the front seat back, my F22 is pretty much standard size.  So cutting the side panel to the listed dimensions should have gotten it really close to fit into the current F22-NG30-Napster configuration.  It was close on the aft side and ok on the bottom edge, but the front was pretty far off.  The angle called for was just too severe as compared to the actual F1-3 Napster aft lean.

After messing around with the side wall for a while, and finally getting it into an acceptable shape to fit into place, I started mocking up the rudder pedals.  I spent a good hour doing research: comparing my buddies’ build sites, re-checking the plans, etc. as I tweaked the final location of the pedals.

I also climbed into the fuselage and tried out my feet location to double check as well. Now, a couple things of note are that my rudder pedals are adjustable, but of course that’s only for fore & aft.  Also, the rudder pedal plans specifically state to keep the pedal 1-1/4″ away from the sidewall.  Part of the reason for me doing so much cross-checking in my research is that this 1-1/4″ clearance with the sidewall is a tall order in such a small space as the nose, especially since with the Davenport nose the sidewalls stay rather thick.  The bottom line is that as long as I have a good clearance with the sidewall, the 1-1/4″ clearance requirement is just not happening.

The main reason for ditching this lofty clearance requirement is that one of the really nice features of the Long-EZ is to remove your feet from the pedals while in cruise flight and resting them adjacent to the pedals, wherever they happen to be mounted (some folks mount them on the inboard side vs the outboard plans side).  Clearly, with the pedal mounted more towards the center of the foot/leg opening in F22, that diminishes the comfort of the pilot (me!) during flight.  So again, I’m chucking the 1-1/4″ clearance for a more reasonable one considering the tight quarters in the nose.

BTW, if you look in the pic below you can barely make out the gap in the junction between the front of the sidewall foam & the F1-3 bulkhead, aka Napster.

With compromises on side clearances made with the rudder pedals, and thus the mounting location on the floor pans pinpointed, I marked around the perimeter of each phenolic pedal base (that comes with 3 x K1000-3 AN3- nutplates pre-installed…nice!). I then used my router to remove about 3/32″ of foam so that each base would lie perfectly flat with the top of the base level with the surface of the foam, allowing a minor clearance for application of micro as well.

Here are the pedal bases fitted in the their mounting recesses in the foam.

As I mentioned at the start of this post, with the location of my pedal bases set & confirmed, I could now dish out the inboard side of each floor pan.  I started by removing about 90% of the material with a coping saw.

I then used my half-moon Perma-Grit tool to remove the rest of the material and sand the dished out area to its final shape.

After the inboard edges were dished out, I then expanded the depressions in the foam for the K1000-3 nutplates just a tad to provide the proper clearance when the rudder pedal base plates are micro’d into place in the floor pans.

Since it was raining outside, I had to reorganize the shop a bit & play musical chairs with my motorcycle to get access to my glass cutting table.  Once table access was “granted,” I then cut out 2 pieces of BID for each floor pan and 3 pieces of BID for each sidewall piece.

While cutting the BID, I used up the final bit of glass on the roll mounted in my cutting table. I loaded up another roll, and have to say this time it felt really good because I knew that this would be the last roll of BID that I will use for this project!

Now, the plans call for 2 pieces of BID for each sidewall piece, so why am I adding a third piece?  Because I’m breaking the rules.  The plans for the Davenport nose say specifically NOT to dish out the side walls, but having nearly 2″ thick Divinycell side walls for an 11″ nose extension is a bit of overkill in my opinion.  Since the foam is so thick, when matching up the sidewall with the opening in F22, the plans do call out for dishing out the side wall to ensure a smooth transition with inboard edge of the F22 sidewall.

Thus, my plan is to leave the bottom of the sidewall the normal width for this install, but in the area above where the sidewall gets dished out, I narrowed the sidewall foam to 1.1″.  I figure if the Ronenburg extended nose and others call for 0.8″ thick sidewalls using blue wing foam, than 1.1″ thick Divinycell on the top half of the sidewall with an extra ply of BID will be plenty strong.

With everything prepped on the floor pans, after one final fitting check, I whipped up some micro and slathered it on the surface areas that would mate with the existing nose components.  Since the 10° called out for in the plans is just a tad bit too severe, I needed to fill a about 0.050″ gap in-between the floor pan and the F22 bottom front, so I mixed in some flox to create some flocro to apply to the back edge of the floor pan.  That explains the slightly different consistency & color you see between the edge micro and the back flocro that is visible in the pic below.

I mounted the right floor pan first & then clamped it into place.

I then micro’d up the edges of the left floor pan and installed it.  When I pulled the clamp off of the right floor pan to install the left one, there was very slight gap that was created between the NG30 and the floor pan.  Although I had planned on glassing the floor pans this evening, it got me to think that I wanted the seams as tight as possible, so I simply re-clamped both floor pans together and decided to let it all cure overnight.

I then got to work sanding the phenolic rudder pedal bases with 100 grit sandpaper.  You can see below that the left base is sanded while the right one isn’t.

I then filled the K1000-3 nutplate bolt holes with saran wrap and did a final test fit for each rudder pedal base into the floor pan foam.  I’ll micro in the pedal base plates just prior to glassing the floor pans.

Tomorrow will be a rather busy day work-wise, etc. but I do intend on getting the floor pans glassed as a minimum.

I started out today working on permanently mounting the NG15 (technically the MKNG15B) casting to the end of the nose gear strut.

I attached the stainless steel foot rest after slathering up all the surfaces with flox.  Here’s the end result.

I find that both the original plans and a lot of vendors that sell parts for the Long-EZ often call out for bolts that are simply too long.  The same holds true for mounting the NG15 in that CP#51 recommends that builders upgrade to AN3-14A bolts, which were way too long.  So I ended up using AN3-12A bolts like a number of other builders I know.

As the flox cured I worked on converting the P2 connector on the AEX from a 9-pin Molex to a 9-pin AMP CPC connector.  Below are a couple of shots mid-mod.

I then wrapped the wires with self-amalgamating (“centerline”) tape.

And finalized the conversion by mounting the cable clamp.

Now, I’m going to quickly get on my soap box.  I’m incredibly grateful as an airplane builder to have a company like Aircraft Spruce to buy the stuff required to build an airplane that would be close to impossible to find anywhere else.

With that being said, as much money as I’ve spent there over the past 5 years, you’d think that when buying an almost $100 piece of foam that is supposed to be 24×48 inches, that I’d actually get what I paid for… not one that is short and malformed on one end and cracked at the other corner on the other end.

The good news is I still had enough to cut out the nose panels, although the foam that ACS delivered is unsat & not cool.

Now, back to the build.  Since I only bought one piece of this foam, I needed to squeeze every square inch out of it that I could.  I spent a bit of time figuring out a cut sheet to optimize the foam usage.  I came up with the configuration below and marked up the foam.

Once I verified the dimension were correct I marked the actual cut lines that I would use for the initial cutout of the panel with my Skil saw.

I then set up a cutting table out back and cut the panels out.

And here are the results.

Tomorrow I plan to shape the panels to their final dimensions, work on the rudder pedal placement and install the floor pans.

Since I had to remove the NG6B and gear strut assembly to glass the inboard F1-3 bulkhead (“Napster”), I started off today by greasing up the NG6B bearings.

Here’s an action shot of me greasing the bearings!

I then started on the gear strut channel that runs from F22 aft to the wheel well.  The first task was to mark the cut lines.

I then cut the lines with the Fein saw.

And cleared out the dead glass, foam, etc.

Here’s a shot of the nose wheel spacing.

Ok, some of my fellow builders have discussed the issue of the stock nose wheel sticking out down below the bottom of the fuselage, normally around 1/4″ to 1/2″.  Fortunately, I don’t have this issue on my bird, and it’s all really because of a serendipitous reason.

When the foam called out per CP 34 back in 1982 changed from the old PVC to the now standard Divinycell, the foam for the fuselage bottom changed from 1.6″ to 1.75″ thick.  Thus, when I built the F22 to the plans height dimensions the fuselage bottom ended up almost 0.2″ lower than the bottom edge of the F22.  I don’t remember all my reasons for doing so right now, but I didn’t sand the bottom fuselage surface to blend into the bottom of F22 (you can see this in a couple pics above).  One reason I left the bottom fuselage foam at 1.75″ was so that the entire nose structure would be a bit lower.

Now, let’s fast forward to a few days ago when I mounted the NG30s to the front of F22.  To keep the bottom of the fuselage even, I dropped the NG30s even with the fuselage foam.  Obviously when I did this it dropped the Water Line (W.L.) of the nose gear pivot down by about 0.2″.  This time around, I was hoping that the lower fuselage/nose gear box would result in an angle that would avoid any further messing around with the gear strut, etc. to fix a less than shy nose wheel.

Well, it did.  When I cut the nose gear strut channel, mocked up the nose gear, and checked the spacing of the wheel in the wheel well I was pleasantly surprised that with a stock gear strut channel (read: no more cutting or layups) my nose wheel sunk out of sight into the wheel well.

Of course, with the wheel sinking deeper (meaning up) into the nose wheel well it means that the standard nose wheel cover (NB) isn’t deep enough and will have to be increased height-wise.

Here’s a shot of the nose gear in the wheel well.

And a couple shots of the nose gear strut mocked up [Note that I removed the temporary NG6B shipping bolts and installed the final AN5-15A bolts and AN970-5 washers when I remounted the gear strut].

I also pulled the peel ply from the inboard BID tapes holding Napster to the NG30 uprights.

I then prepped a microswitch for mounting on the nose gear actuator as a part of the nose gear warning system.

I crimped up some 22 AWG wires for the nose gear warning system.  These wires will be ran through the bigger AMP CPC connector that I recently ordered from Mouser.

These wires are also for the nose gear warning system, but they mount into the opposite side AMP CPC connector and will terminate at the gear & canopy warning module.

I also took the opportunity to re-terminate the socket connectors that come from the nose gear actuator side of the P1 connector.

Here’s a shot of the P1 connector.  After I confirm that all the connections are good I’ll zip tie the wires and permanently mount the cable clamp.

Also, the two power 12 AWG wires (Red & Black) coming from nose gear actuator motor in the end were just too big to fit into the back connector plate.  I tried slightly expanding a couple of connector holes with a #29 drill bit to start out with, which worked well.  In the end though, I finally threw in the towel and ended up chopping off the last 3″ of the power wires and replacing it with a 3″ piece of 14 AWG wire.  You can see the connectors in the picture below where I spliced the new wires into place.  After messing around with the unruly wires, it was great to work with wires that simply went where they’re supposed to!

Tomorrow I plan on getting the wheel assembly mounted to the gear strut.  Since the nose requires a lot glassing, I’ll try to fit in work on the elevators as stuff is curing.