Today was one of those big milestone moments for me in the build of this Long-EZ.  Just like taking that first pic sitting inside your freshly glassed fuselage, this was one of those days that I had been wanting to get to for a long, long time.  I finally got the nose gear official installed, both mechanically & electronically, and so far it’s all working pretty darn good.  I’ll discuss the gear a bit later, but for now, let me start detailing my day’s work chronologically,

I started by taking 6 of K1000-3 nutplate assemblies that I made up last night down to the shop along with a scrap piece of the über dense H250 foam.

I cut rectangular pieces out of the foam to serve as a base for the individual nutplate assemblies.  The odd foam piece below the row of 4 standard looking rectangles will go on the aft side CL of F28, and hang aft at a very sharp downward angle.  Again, this is for mounting what is essentially a giant “T”-shaped electrical components & avionics “tree.”

I then worked the foam pieces to allow me to embed a K1000-3 nutplate into the foam.

Here are the end results.  Now, I had every intention of mounting these onto the backside of the F22 center strut (just forward of the nose wheel cover) and on the bottom aft side of F28, when I took a break for lunch.  Reviewing in my mind that I still needed to construct the electrical component structure (I nicknamed it the “Triparagon” … don’t ask me why, but if the Avengers/SHIELD can have a building with a cool name like “Triskelion” than my electrical tree/tower/structure can have a cool friggin’ name too!  Ha!), I thought why should I install these now when I can simply bolt them to the structure later, put the whole thing in place with some 5-min glue on these puppies and have all my bolt holes aligned perfectly.  Duh!  So, I bagged these suckers up and put them on hold.

Having successfully avoided yet more work, I then moved on to drilling the outer NG3 bracket on the now cured gear strut. I messed around for maybe 10 minutes dialing in the hole location, and even though I used a hole punch my bit slid over to the left by about a 1/16th of an inch. Stainless steel being what it is, the hole seemed to magically move even further left when I used a bigger bit!

The hole I started on side #1 was definitely off center to the hole on the interior NG4 bracket.  So, I left the first hole alone and since I had access to side #2 from the INSIDE, I simple drilled the other side through the first hole.  I made sure that the second hole was drilled spot dead center.

I then concentrated on drilling out the second hole to about 3/16″ in diameter.  Before I took this whole shabang over to the drill press, I grabbed a smaller bit (about ~1/8″) and drilled from side #2 back into the first drilled hole in side #1, this time from the inside.  However, my entire goal here was to simple remove a good amount of steel so that when I drilled through side #2 on the drill press and then got to the messed up hole on side #1, there wouldn’t be much resistance to the 1/4″ bit to do its job.  When I finished with this step I had a nice 3/16″ hole in side #2, and a very odd looking figure “8” or ∞ looking hole in side #1.

Once on the drill press, I started with a 7/32″ bit to basically ensure that the hole was centered and remove just a bit more material.  I ran it down to the lower side and barely kissed the metal in the hole just to remove a bit more material.  I wanted the sides of both the upper & lower holes to guide the 1/4″ bit, so I really didn’t try to do much on the lower (∞) hole with the 7/32″ bit.

After I loaded up the 1/4″ bit, it nearly slid through the first hole and made a beautiful clean (read: not jacked up!) hole on the bottom hole (the original side #1).   With straight, clean holes that ran entirely through my NG3 & NG4 brackets, I was a happy man!

[One point of note: as I was installing the NG3/NG4 brackets over the 1-ply of BID last night, the brackets slid down the gear strut another 0.17″ making the total distance from the NG6B pivot to the center of the NG3 bolt to be 6.47″ total (and final).  I wasn’t concerned in the least since I could always adjust the gear strut travel with the microswitches, and lower is actually better for leverage, and possibly strength(?).

After reinstalling the nose gear assembly, I made the requisite nose gear test video to make it official!

I then started designing my 2-part NG30 cover.  Here’s the aft part that I came up with using scrap cardboard as the build material to construct the mockup.

I’d like to point out that the biggest reason for me covering the NG30 nose gear box is to keep cold air from rushing into the cockpit.  However, another huge reason is that it gives me a platform to hang & mount a bunch of stuff all over to help organize the front nose area.  I think that by designing the right NG30 cover I will really optimize the space I have available for mounting all my forward mounted components.  In fact, in the pic below you can see the AEX module mounted into the aft area of the NG30 cover.

I pondered for a good while on how I was going to construct the aft NG30 cover.  The front NG30 cover will be fairly easy since it’s essentially a 4″ x 6″ flat plate with screw holes.

Since I had very close to what amounted to be a basic box, I didn’t want to pull the crappy, messy urethane foam out to start carving away.  I had simple lines here and the more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that I needed to construct this cover in steps, first of all, and use some foam in the process.  I would love to have a 3-ply BID cover with no foam, but I’m not going to A) remove the nose gear actuator to fill the area with foam to carve, or B) fill foam in around the nose gear actuator to carve, since there’s really not that much room around it to begin with.

As I was digging around for possible solutions, I ran across this foam piece in the closet.  I’m pretty sure that this scrap piece was a spar cap cutout.  It was maybe a 1/4″ thick and I thought this would surely do the trick.

I cut the blue foam piece to width to match the total width of the NG30 cover side panel.  As you can tell from the pic below, I was going to have to micro two pieces together to get one side panel.

And then guess who stopped by?  That’s right!  Why it’s Banarbas (aka “Zippy”) the Whale!  haha!  (Sorry, couldn’t resist!)

I grabbed a couple pieces of scrap BID and ensured that one per side fit.

I then laid up 1-ply of BID on each side panel of the NG30 cover.  I only used one ply because a lot of phenolic plates, etc. will be embedded into these NG30 cover sidewalls, so at least 2 more plies of BID will be added to this 1-ply of BID.

Also, you may note that I only micro’d the edges of the NG30 cover foam side panels.  The reason why is that I’ll keep a good majority of the edge foam throughout the cover construction since it will in fact be corner foam as the cover gets completed.  However, the majority of the foam in the middle ‘field’ areas will get removed.

Since I will be adding subsequent plies of BID, I went ahead and peel plied both NG30 side panel layups.

Tomorrow I’ll attempt to complete the construction of the aft NG30 cover.  Once the NG30 cover is complete, I’ll start working on the glassing in the nose side walls.

At least that’s what I felt like this evening . . . (and don’t ask me what it is, just focus on the prefix: “slog” … ha!)

I had meetings and appointments today so I didn’t get back to work on the project until after 1700.

The first thing I did was to test out my new wiring connectors on the nose gear actuator.  I double checked the connections, checked the battery voltage (12.86V) and then hit the switch.  Ah, the motor came alive and down it went.  Good deal.  Then came the inevitable gotcha.  I threw the switch the other direction to raise the actuator arm and heard . . . nothing.  I double checked my wire connections, A → B, C → D, n → ∞, and all looked good.

So I tried it again.  Nothing.

What ensued was about a 4 hour troubleshooting session where I did continuity checks on every single wire connection point, every run from starting terminal, through connectors, to the end connector and everything toned out perfectly on the Fluke.  I checked the internal contacts from the P2 connector to the internal contacts on the AEX board.  All good.  I recharged the battery while I went out to the grocery store: fully charged at 13.23V, and still no up travel.

I reread Jack’s directions and happened upon a point of note about damaged microswitches.  Since I now had extra I figured it wouldn’t hurt.  When I started removing the microswitch on the right side facing the front of the unit, after marking its location of course, it literally crumbled in my hand.  Not sure why that happened, but I replaced it.  The good news is that I was able to reuse the lever arm from the newly deceased switch on the first switch body that got sucked into the ‘actuator of destruction’ and lost its lever arm.  So I’m still down only one micro switch, but unfortunately the switch replacement still had no affect on the actuator being able to return to the up position.

Having exhausted every troubleshooting technique, and checking, double-checking and triple-checking every connection and continuity of wiring, I figured it was time to punt.

I’ll call Jack tomorrow to figure this thing out.

I took a break in the middle of the nose gear actuator troubleshooting saga above & spent about 15 minutes cleaning up the peel ply snots and edges of the right floor pan layup.  Now both floor pans are ready for next steps.

Later in the evening, and I do mean late, with a fair amount of frustration with the nose gear actuator, and weary of chasing electron phantoms and wire ghosts, I decided to roll up my sleeves and at least get something glassed and curing so the night wasn’t wasted.

I turned my sites on the backside of the F4.1 (old F6) mini upright bulkhead that gets mounted to the aft side of the NG30 uprights.  Although I keep wanting to write “aft,” I say “backside” because the side I’m glassing is not visible once glassed but actually faces forward.  The F4.1 gets a 2-ply BID layup, and I’ll be adding two approximately 1″ wide strips on top and bottom as reinforcements for the velcro slots that will be used to mount the Radenna SkyRadar-DX ADS-B IN receiver.

Also on the list are the BC1’s, which are really a continuation of the NG30s into the forward battery box area just foreword of the F1-3 bulkhead (Napster).  Since I will be mounting a retractable heated pitot tube, I had to mount the battery in a very specific location.  This means that securing the battery will not possible in the usual Long-EZ fashion of simply strapping it to the nearing bulkhead.  In the original plans that was a big function of the F6 bulkhead, since the battery was located immediately aft of F6 and was merely strapped to it.

My battery, for lack of a better description, will be out in free space.  To ensure it stays in place I’ll be using a 2″ wide military grade web strap with a metal clasp and about 6-8″ of Velcro that will wrap around the center of the battery, holding the battery to the BC1s. But how you say?  I will have a metal tube that is mounted between the BC1s, right under the battery.  Since the tubing is clearly strong enough to hold the battery in place, I just need to ensure that the BC1’s are strong enough.  Thus, I’ll be adding a 5-ply BID pad to both the inboard and outboard side of each BC1.  The outboard glass will never get disturbed once glassed, while the inboard sides will be drilled to the diameter of the metal tube along with the BC1.  In addition, I’ll have a thinner version of this type strap running around the battery from side-to-side.

In preparation, I used some pulled peel ply from the floor pans to make up a small template for the 5-ply BID pads.  I cut 10 small scrap pieces of BID and stacked them 2 plies deep in 5 stacks in a prepreg setup.  I also cut 2 plies of BID for the backside F4.1 layup.

BTW, the 5-ply BID reinforcement pads are shaped the way they are to not only reinforce the battery mounting cross tube, but also to allow room for the center H100 foam piece that will get mounted in the channel between the BC1s, just below the 5-ply pads.

I mixed up some epoxy with slow hardener and wetted out the F4.1 layup and the prepreg BID.

As you can see, I continued to wet out the F4.1 layup while also using my template to mark up the 5 sets of BID for the reinforcement pad on the outboard BC1s.  [Note: Since the F4.1 is H100 foam, I didn’t use micro to prep the surface since the foam is so tight grained it merely laughs at micro).

I cut out the 5 BID pads for the BC1s.

I continued to work the F4.1 layup making sure it was completely wetted out in-between the different steps on the BC1 BID.  After applying a thin layer of epoxy on each layup area on the BC1s, I then laid up the BID pads one by one on the surface of the BC1s where the battery tie down tube will get mounted.  I split the last 2-ply BID prepregged pad for the fifth and final ply on each BC1.

I then removed the final top piece of plastic on the 5-ply BID pads.

I added the approximately 1″ x 3″ reinforcement ply both top & bottom on the F4.1 and also peel plied the BC1 5-ply reinforcement pads.  I applied the peel ply a little wet since the 5-ply BID pads are thick and I wanted a good smooth transition between the pads and the original surface of each BC1.

I finished wetting out the F4.1 reinforcement pads and covered the BC1 assemblies with plastic Saran wrap.

I then cut a piece of peel ply from my roll of peel ply and began to prep it for F4.1 by taping a 3/4″ block of wood to the end of it.  This wood will serve as a weight to keep the glass conformed to the curved bottom end of the F4.1.  [Note: The reason the bottom of my F4.1 plate is curved is because I rounded all the corners on my NG30s to minimize any potential stress points, and because I’m just damned fancy . . . haha!]

Note that I have the F4.1 work piece sitting atop the BC1 assemblies.

Below is the peel ply applied to the F4.1.  I taped it on the top side with the weight pulling the glass over the curved surface on the opposite end (nearest the camera).  The block of wood is not very heavy of course, but it is just enough to keep the glass conforming properly (read: “attached”) to the curved bottom end of F4.1.

I then careful stacked some blocks of wood around the F4.1 layup.

And added a few heavy items to weigh down the 5-ply BID pads laid up on the BC1s. Now, I didn’t use something bulky like a gallon paint can to weigh this thing down because I wanted it open so I could aim a heat lamp at it without all my heat rays getting blocked.

Since I had a good little bit of epoxy left over, and I hate wasting epoxy, I grabbed some foam out of my scrap pile to make up a small 3″ wide by 6″ long 1/4″ thick “draft plate.” This plate will sit immediately above the NG6B nose gear pivot and will keep the cold draft air coming in to a minimum.  My buddy Marco came up with the idea and since it’s a good one, I’m copying it!  You can check out his version of this here.

This is regular 1/4″ PVC foam, so I micro’d it with slurry and then filled in the holes with thick micro.  I then laid up 2-plies of BID, and since it will be getting glassed into a very tight spot between the NG30s I peel plied it so that it I could have BID tape coverage anywhere I needed as I attach it.

Tomorrow I’ll call Jack Wilhelmson and figure out the issue with the nose gear actuator.  I also plan on finishing the right side nose wall piece.  However, I’m not going to glass in the nose side walls until I get some other tasks crossed off the list since I want to have easier access to the internal nose areas without two big side walls staring me in the face.

Today was still all about finishing the left elevator rebuild . . . (big sigh!)

I was pleased to find no nasty surprises when I took the sandbags off the foam elevator cores.  So far my evil plan is working to get the elevators to align.

I started off by taping up all the openings on the elevator tube to keep the epoxy out of all the important orifices.

I then covered the top of the elevator foam core with patches of foil tape, hit each one with a drop of 5-min glue, and then mounted the elevator upside down on the work bench.  I weighed down the elevator with sandbags, favoring the LE side.

Although tough to see in this pic, I remembered to slightly sand the area where the outboard weight UNI will reside on the bottom face of the elevator.

Since I had my Friday afternoon online work meeting I didn’t want to start the layup of the bottom elevator UNI knowing that it would take too long for me to finish.  So instead, I knocked another item off my list by cleaning up some epoxy goo on the face of the F22.

Then, while I was standing there looking over the F22 area, I realized that my internal brake lines were kinda hanging out into space.  I wanted to secure them in place & protect them, so I grabbed a piece of nasty urethane foam and hacked it up and shaped a reasonable gap filler ramp on each side to slide in between the brake line, the fuselage floor/wall and F22, on each side of course.  I’ll install these with a lot of messy micro and 1 ply of BID.

After my work call, I then laid up the 2-ply UNI elevator bottom skin.

The first pic is a fuzzy shot of the elevator bottom layup when it hit its “green” stage (trust me, it looked FAB-U-LOUS! haha!).  I then razor trimmed the elevator.

While I was waiting for the elevator to cure I (finally!) went ahead and finished wiring up the nose gear actuator to test it out.  You can see the test in the video below:

Then, to let the glass cure even longer, I took the opportunity to run down to Home Depot to grab some 5/16″ bolts to attach the fuselage saddles to the fuselage dolly cross struts.  While out, I called a good buddy of mine and ended up on with him for over an hour.  This came into play since later in the evening I simply ran out of time… to make noise!

After I got back home, with the elevator skin cured more, I pulled the peel ply off the outboard weight mount area.

I then popped the elevator off the work bench.  The pic below shows why I love using the foil tape so much. It holds incredibly well, but all but one of the pieces of foil tape stayed on the bench.  Again, the top of the elevator foam core is clean … without any divots!

I trimmed the foam off the elevator TE, but I couldn’t finish the job because it was late and I didn’t want to make a lot of noise with the Dremel Tool.  So instead I prepped the entire elevator to skin the top of it first thing tomorrow morning.

I then sanded the glass edge on the LE to provide a smooth transition for the top skin.

I also sanded the depression for the outboard elevator weight on the top foam core.

With all the prep actions completed for laying up the top elevator skin except for clearing the TE glass of all the foam & micro gunk, I turned out the lights and called it a night.

Again, tomorrow first thing I will layup the 2-ply UNI top elevator skin.  I have a lot of non-build work to do this weekend so my time to work on the plane will be limited.  That being the case, I still want to get this elevator completed.

I started off spending a good hour, and 3 good long board sanding sheets, before I finally got the hint that although the primer looks cured, and feels cured to the touch, it’s not cured fully and that’s why my sanding sheets gummed up so quickly.  Argh!

So I quickly stopped that futile endeavor and started working on the elevator build prep.  My first step was to ensure the table surface was level for the elevator build.  I pulled out the über awesome aluminum straight board that I picked up in Germany to check the work bench alignment.  From the corner to about 60″ in I had just about 30 thou of sag in the table.  A couple of quick shims and everything looked good, straight and level.

I laid down some duct tape where the TE of the elevator will run on the table and then got to work deconstructing the elevator.

The first task was to remove the torque tube offset from the inboard side.

And then the elevator weight on the outboard side.

After cutting the UNI plies at the base of the foam on top & bottom, I gave the weight a sharp rap, snapping it off.  Unfortunately it came off a little less gracefully (read: intact) than I had hoped for, but I think with some judicious application of flox it may very well work on the next elevator.  BTW, as you can see below, the UNI pretty much peeled right off the weight with a little effort, but not a lot.

I then broke out my old friends, the NC-7s, to get a gauge of how they line up currently in the hinge tab slots.

I diced up a popsicle stick to make spacers for the current NC-7 gaps to replicate this on the next elevator when the core is mounted to the tube.  And yes, I’m allowing for the .020″ that comes into play for the skin thickness.

I set the current elevator in a good position for the next one as it gets constructed, and then made some alignment marks in a number of places to help ensure the elevator core gets mounted to the tube in the same configuration as the current one.

This pic may be a tad fuzzy, but here is the underside of the elevator with its significant thin areas due to intense sanding over the delams that are root cause of all the issues I’ve had with this elevator.  Not good.

I broke out the Fein saw and started cutting right at the junction of the elevator core and the elevator tube at a very shallow angle.

I would track this cut for a bit until the blade broke through the fiberglass, then was able to move forward another few inches before having to come back to the surface and start the process again.  Here is the actual cut through the skin.

And here’s the entire bottom side of the elevator skin cut just aft of the tube.

I then moved to the topside and did essentially the same thing.

I had to put a metal rod into the top of the elevator tube to pry it gently from the foam core, but it came off with a good amount of pressure.

Here’s the elevator tube after I went to town on it with the Fein saw to knock off all the leftover foam, epoxy & glass residue.  I then filled up a PVC tube with white Vinegar and dunked the elevator tube into it about 3/4’s of the way up the tube (not shown).  I’ll let that sit overnight and see if it softens up the goobers on the elevator tube.

Tomorrow I’ll continue my quest in finishing this new elevator, and the final sanding of the primer on the canard.

. . . yep, and sometimes you’re the nail.  Today, I was the nail.

Since the weather was good, I decided to wash off all the sanding dust off my motorcycle and then cut the 4130 steel engine mount extrusions.  Now, as far as I know you can’t buy 1″ 4130 angle “iron,” so I bought 1″ x 1″ x 1/8″ square tubing a couple of years ago for the engine mount extrusions.  I figured I would merely cut the tubing along opposite corners and Voila, I would have my L-shape angled 4130 pieces.

About 6 months ago I called a local steel company and asked them how much it would be to have them cut these for me. They said they didn’t do it and referred me to a local machinist, who wanted nearly $200 to cut the damn things.  Well, a couple of months ago a friend of mine’s elderly father unfortunately passed away and she had the small table saw below that she very graciously gave to me.  Since it was a little beat up and since it’s much more inexpensive than my larger portable table saw, I would use it with a metal cutting blade to cut these 4130 square tubing engine extrusions.

Here’s the square 4130 tubing for the engine mount extrusions.

Ahh, the well laid plans of mice & men!  Unfortunately the blade would flex to the side under the pressure of the hard 4130 steel so it wouldn’t really cut the corners cleanly.  I played around with it for about 15 minutes before finally realizing it was a lesson in futility.  With the corners thinned a bit, I grabbed my Dremel and tried to cut it freehand.  Well, that’s the hardest 4130 steel I’ve seen because by the time I got from one end to the other my Dremel cut bit had disintegrated.

Ok 4130 square tubing!  You won round #1, but I’ll win in the long run!  Ha!  With that, I moved on to more important build tasks at this point in time.

So early in the morning, around 2:30 AM I went down to the work shop to “cheese grate” the micro finish on the canard.  Well, the micro hadn’t fully “greened” yet, so it was still a bit gummy.  I did what I could for about a half hour, but then gave up and went to bed after setting my alarm for 4 AM to get another half hour of “cheese grating” in.  To be honest though, I’ve been exhausted from sanding for hours on end & building the fuselage dolly. Bottom line I slept right through that alarm and missed the “green” state of my micro, so it was nice and cured when I started this afternoon.  You can see that the right side is much more cheese grated than the left.

I knocked down the high wave tops of cured micro with the 2″ PVC pipe with 36 grit sandpaper, which is what I used to shape the swoosh tips.  After about 10 minutes with the PVC sanding tube, I moved on to the long sanding board with 36 grit mounted on it.  Again, I sanded for about 10 minutes with the long board.

Here’s a shot of the left side of the canard after I sanded it with the long board.

After I got the contour somewhat in line, I switched to the contour sanding block with 36 grit sandpaper.

And here’s a couple shots after I did about 3 good passes (~5 minutes) with the contour sanding block.

I then switched back to the long board, using it primarily for the rest of the sanding of the left side top canard surface.  Now, I did do a little hand sanding on the top of the swoosh tip and a did a few more quick passes with the contour sanding block.  Below is a couple more shots after the major sanding on the left side was complete.

I then started in on the micro finish on the right side of the canard.  Since I had done a fair amount of cheese grating on the right side, I started with the long sanding board.

After working the long board for a good 10 minutes, I then switched to contour sanding block.  Interestingly, you can see in the pic below that the main contact point for the contour sanding block on the right side was just forward of the TE. Now, I will say that although my canard looks spot on when I sight it by eye, and even run a string on the edges, I think there’s a very slight twist to my canard.  Nothing major, but enough to throw some twists (pardon the pun!) into my canard endeavors.

I then checked the top of the canard with the original contour checking template.  Now, in the pic below you probably notice a pink LE.  Before I took this pic I was checking the top canard profile and kept seeing a gap at my LE, in part caused by my contour sanding block digging into the LE edge a bit.  It did get a little of the glass, but not nearly enough to require any glass repair, but I did what something tougher than micro as a foundation so I slathered on a thick layer of Bondo onto the outer 2/3rds of the left side LE.

Since Bondo cures so quickly, after working for a bit on the right side I came back and quickly sanded the Bondo.  Now, I know Bondo is heavier, but the resulting sanded layer averages around 30 thou (0.030″) thick.  Like I said, it’s enough to give a little depth and a little harder base that can’t get sanded off so quickly.  I’m really seeing that both the trailing & leading edges can go uglier fast, so due diligence to these areas is a must.

I then violated one of the laws of the finishing composites by adding a second round of micro to fill in the low points on both sides (left/right, top) of the canard, and also slather a bunch on the LE on both sides to build that up to better get the plans LE shape as close as possible.

Early on I was aggressively shaping the left outboard/bottom swoosh tip when I got to glass, and broke through to the inner layer of glass.  With the glass thin at this point, when I mixed up the Bondo, swabbed some on that area too to beef it up just a bit more.

Here’s a couple shots of micro round 2.

Of course I mixed up too much micro and expecting at one point that this might be the case, I implemented my ancillary plan and Dremeled out the foam on the edges of the headrest halves.

Here’s the micro applied to the headrest edges.

I then peel plied the micro, closed & locked the headrest and then weighed it down to compress the micro as best possible.

I’ll most likely cheese grate the second application of micro later this evening, but for the sake of expediency I’m going to go ahead and post this.  I’ll continue to focus on the canard over the next few days, but I will start working on the new elevator cores as well.

I spent the first half hour this morning finalizing my wire tracking & matching endeavor on the EZ Noselift Actuator wiring harness.  I got down to 2 unclaimed wires, but wasn’t sure & couldn’t tell by the wiring diagram if they were supposed to be spliced together, although I suspected they were.

I fired off a quick e-mail to Jack Wilhelmson to verify a few things on the wiring and he e-mailed back shortly later to set me on the straight & narrow path!  So all is good thus far in the wiring department for the nose gear actuator.

After I got everything straight with Jack, and as I was waiting for his e-mail, I was finishing up some research on Amp CPC connectors on Mouser.com.  I ended up calling Mouser to confirm that I was ordering the correct stuff.  After cracking the code on the various pins & sockets for the Amp connectors, I fired off my dorder to Mouser for Amp connectors to replace the Molex connectors currently used in the nose lift actuator system.

After I got the nose gear actuator system’s electronics straightened out, I started back on my quest to get the canard finished.  I ended up sanding the bottom of the swoosh tips, the area just inboard of the swoosh tips and the 2 outboard elevator hinge pin areas on each side.  Quite amazingly, by the time I was done on the bottom of the canard, 3 hours had flown by.

The corners where the canard end caps (swoosh tips) meet the TE take a while to sand and are time-busting PITAs!

After I got the newly primed areas sanded on the bottom bottom of the canard, I went to work on mounting the canard right-side up to finish the top of the canard.  To be clear, my buddy Mike recommended I wait so that I can finish the middle nose fairing on the canard at the same time, but I may utilize an alternative center canard fairing which would negate the standard plans canard nose fairing.

In addition, as I’ve mentioned before (and I have thought about this a fair amount while I’m finishing the canard):  As much time as it takes to finish the surfaces of this plane motivates me even more to finish the parts I can in prep for paint so that the finishing of all these parts don’t come due at one time!

I ended up deciding to use 2×3 blocks under the canard to hold it in place while I finish the top.  I marked the lower curvature profile of the canard in 5 consecutive spots on a 5′ long 2×3.  I used the lower contour profile as a template and after marking the 2×3 I cut out my mounting blocks.

Here are the blocks ready to be hot glued to the work bench.

I ended up only using 4 of the 5 mounting blocks, and I’m mounting them in the middle of the canard, where finish won’t matter, and at the ends where the swoosh tip junctions meet the canard ends, since these areas need some work on the transition anyways.

I then measured the angle of the table again on each end.

And then matched the surface angle of the canard to the table at each end so that it is aligned, to ensure I’m sanding true while using the contour sanding block.

I then broke out the Bondo and set the canard to the 4 mounting blocks.

Here’s a close up shot of the canard Bondo’d to the mounting block.  Note the hot glue holding the block to the work bench.

This is the last time the canard will be in its raw form!

And here’s the top of the canard after I applied the micro finish.

After the West epoxy micro cures for 2-3 hours and is in its “green” stage, I’ll cheese grate the surface to knock off all the high points and get the surface cleaned up.

Since there was a good chance of rain earlier today I decided to get the wood for the table platform brackets cut.  In addition, I wanted to get the saw out of the garage and back into the shed behind the house.

Figuring that there wasn’t going to be a lot of visual storytelling going on today, I snapped this picture to show the wood-cutting process.

My original plan was to get the bottom of the canard sanded and then West micro finish spread on the top of the canard.  However, I ended up spending almost 3 hours sanding down the primer on the swoosh tips, inboard canard tips area, and the two outboard hinge tabs.

Once I fished sanding the first round of primer, I applied a fresh coat of primer on the areas I just sanded.

I then went to dinner and upon returning home I found that the primer in the cup was still flowing out & very wet, so I used it to apply a final coat to build up the total primer thickness as much as possible.

After cleaning up after the final primer application, I went upstairs & reviewed the wiring diagram for Jack WIlhelmson’s nose gear actuator.

I did finish the major build tasks on the fuselage dolly, but allow me to cover the day chronologically:

I started off this morning checking the NG30s’ outboard side layups.  I failed to get this pic in the mix last night, but it’s essentially a bunch of heavy stuff that I balanced on separate 2x4s that are resting on plastic over the 3 hard points I just glassed, on each NG30.

When I pulled everything off, here’s what I found.  Nice & flat!

And then I pulled off the peel ply.

And here’s the finished product:  Edge-trimmed & sanded NG30s ready for attachment to the F22 bulkhead.

I re-drilled the gear actuator mounting bracket holes and put the NG30 nose assembly all back together to check fit & clearances.  As  you can see, it all looked good and went together smoothly.  I checked the inside measurement of the NG30s and it’s almost exactly  3″, so the width is spot on (it would actually be a little tough to be off with the configuration as it is, with the mounting bracket spacers and all, but still, good to have the right numbers!)

Nose gear actuator, nose gear pivot (NG6B) and NG30’s ready for install!

Here’s a good shot of why I filled in the hard point depressions.  As you can see below, the washers sit nice and level on the new glass and there’s no concern over torquing these very important bolts down to the right value.  Nice, clean & EZ!

After all the work on the NG30s was done for the day, I spent about an hour upstairs researching parts & electrical connectors for the nose gear actuator (I really don’t care for Molex connectors in an airplane so my plan is to swap them out for AMP CPC connectors, as my buddy Dave Berenholtz did).

I then opened up the garage and got to work on the fuselage dolly.  My first task of the day was to get all the corner support struts built and attached.  These are essentially the corner table legs that keep the top fuselage table mount steady and secure at each elevation.

The support struts are simply 2x4s with a 5/8″ slot cut down the center so that a stationary 1/2″ bolt mounted on the lower box slides through the slot.  Then, when the table is at it’s desired elevation, I simply tighten the 1/2″ wing nuts and secure the table mount in position.  A point of note is that I intentionally made the slots in the support struts a little oversized at 5/8″ compared to the stationary 1/2″ carriage bolt (which protrudes through the strut slot) to ensure there was wiggle room in the sliding action to prevent any unwanted binding.

Here I’ve positioned a corner support strut and am marking the upper point to be drilled out with a 5/8″ auger bit.

Here’s a corner support strut ready to be permanently screwed to the table platform.

Side view of fuselage dolly with the corner support struts ready to be permanently mounted to the table platform (top work/mounting surface).

I had also done a bit of research on creating ratchet arms as a safety mechanism since I’ll have a fair bit of weight on this table.  The scissor jack can easily support & lift 5,000 lbs, but the area that it supports is less than 1 sq. ft., so these corner struts are vitally important to the stability of the load on the top table platform.

So although I haven’t designed or made the exact ratchet pawls, I went ahead and notched each corner support strut every 3″ starting from the bottom of the strut for the ratchet pawl to engage with once I make & mount them.

An updated pic with ratchet notches on the support struts:

This is a pic I took immediately after testing out the raising and lowering of the table platform.  So far my plan is working as designed!

This is pretty much the same view as above, but some minor additions have been made such as cross supports at the end of the table platform and the final install of the lower decking immediately adjacent to the scissor jack on each side.

You may notice in the pics that the scissor jack is not at its full extension height.  This means the height of the table platform is being limited by the length of the slot in the support struts, not by the scissor jack.  I have already planned out additional steps I can implement to allow the scissor jack, and thus the table platform, to reach its max height… IF I really need it to go that high.  We’ll see if I need to go that route during future build tasks.

It is getting dark much faster these days, and that will be even more accelerated here on the east coast as tonight we change our clocks for daylight savings time.  Thus, by the time I had the top mounted it was fairly dark, so I lit it as best as I could.  After turning on the outdoor lights there seemed to be enough that instead of just taking a simple picture, I figured I would attempt to make a video to show the fuselage dolly in operation.

Now, I didn’t narrate the video because I did this on a whim, and I had music playing fairly loudly in the garage.  However, the mike on my phone hardly picked up the actual volume of the music, so the video seems like a silent film to a degree.  Yes folks! I’m that lazy that it pains me to now talk during my videos!  Ha!

Oh, one other note on the video.  In the video I appear to be hunting & pecking around for the hex drive on the scissor jack that is situated towards the center of the table under the table platform (If I haven’t mentioned it before, I angled it towards the corner for easier raising/lowering operations when the fuselage is mounted on the table platform).  My point is that it’s actually very easy to see and engage the scissor jack under the platform, it was just more difficult & time consuming to attempt it while trying to film the process with a phone in my hand.

Ok, a very final note on this video: the canopy is inside the lower box with the end caps screwed in place, making this a very secure housing for the canopy until I get to Chap 18.

I started off today intent on getting back to the canard, so I sanded the canard swoosh tips, the inboard area of the swoosh tips, and the immediate area around each of the outer two hinge tabs with 220 grit paper for about an hour.

I then got pulled away by a few mandatory errands, phone calls and work teleconference.

I got back to working on the plane at about 4pm, and since the days are getting shorter, and cooler, I figured I would get to working on the fuselage dolly during the daylight, and while it was a bit warmer (vs night), and not raining.  I apologize but since I left my camera upstairs and I was in the “I’ll get it in 5 minutes” mode, alas, there are no pics.  However, what I did was basically cut the remaining canopy box covers & the framed the main table top and mounted it to the scissor jack.  There’s a few more things I need to tweak to optimize its operational use, but I can already tell I’m going to be really happy with the functionality of this fuselage dolly.

I ended up spending about 3 hours on the fuselage dolly.  My guesstimate is that I have just about another 2 hours to go to finish it up.

After the 3 hours were up (and it being too dark to see any lines on my tape measure!), I ran to Home Depot to pick up some hardware.  I grabbed a quick bite while I was out at a nice little Hibachi place, then came back home and got to work on the final sanding of the swoosh tips on the bottom side of the canard.

After about another 30 minutes of sanding, I broke out the primer, mixed it up really well for a good while, and laid down a coat of primer on the bottom side of the swoosh tips, the inboard area of the swoosh tips, the elevator weight pockets and around & on the hinge tabs.

After the first coat of primer was on the bottom of the canard, I picked back up working on the  NG30’s.  Now, yesterday was all about the inboard side of the NG30’s while today is all about the outboard side.  My goal was to finish prepping the NG30’s so that they would be ready for install on the nose of the fuselage.

My specific steps today on the NG30’s was to fill in the 3 aft hard points with more BID “roundels” to bring the surface of each hard point up to the level of the surrounding NG30 surface.  Why?  Well, because I want to be able to use the correct washer and right now I either have to go with a smaller washer, or pack the hard point depression with flox before I add the washer.  Thus, in my mind it made more sense to just add a few more layers of BiD into the hard points.

Since I’m adding glass to the hard points, I am following the advice that Jack gave me during a conversation a few years ago by adding 1 ply of UNI at a 45° bias angle from the F22 junction down toward the front of the NG30 (just aft of the NG8 screws).  And then on top of the UNI will go 1-ply of BID that also goes right up to the NG8 area. To be clear, Jack had mentioned this as part of a few possible, but not “mandatory,” mods to increase the strength of the NG30’s.  After reviewing my emails with Jack, and taking into account Jerry Schneider’s not too distant crunching of his stock NG30’s in his Cozy after a hard landing, I decided to employ all NG30 beefing up measures, weight be damned!!! (Forgive me Burt, for I have sinned . . . !)

The first task was to clean up the excess epoxy and prep the glass for adhesion using the Dremel tool.  One point of note is that when I originally built these NG30 hard points, I did them to plans so I put weights on them to compress the glass.  Boy did it ever!  Plans say to glass in 15 plies, and I ended up adding at least another 3 plies.  Well, the weight really worked, and the top of each hard point is still well below the surface of the NG30.  Great for strength but bad for washer positions!

Below shows a progression of me cleaning up the NG30 aft hard points with the Dremel tool.

After I got the hard points cleaned up, I then sanded & prepped the surface of each NG30.

I then grabbed some scrap BID to use in the pre-preg for the hard point “roundels.”

Here’s a shot of the BID glass “roundels” getting cut and glassed in place.  I have to say that I thought most of the hard point depressions would handle another 6-8 plies of BID, but by the time I got to laying up the UNI pieces on each side, I would have to say I added about another 10 plies into each hard point depression.

Below is my finished NG30 quest for the evening.  Each NG30 has 1-ply UNI at 45° bias (as per discussion with Jack) & 1-ply BID over the now surface level glassed hard points.  Then I peel plied the entire layup mainly to match the original layup surface texture.  Of course I’ll also be adding a number of BID tapes to these in the nose build process.

I took quick shot of inboard side of canard swoosh tip area to show what it looks like.  Note that I taped up the end of the hinge tab to prime it.

And here the tape is removed and you can see that the majority of the hinge tab is primed.

Tomorrow I plan on cleaning up the NG30’s by pulling the peel ply, razor trimming the edges and ensuring the layup was good.  I then plan on sanding the primer on the canard, and hitting whatever spots on the canard bottom that need another coat of primer.  I will then knock out the fuselage dolly.

I started off this morning working for about an hour on some build project housecleaning duties such as updating my spreadsheet with recent purchases, and my project “Order of Battle,” and my specific to-do lists for each chapter.

After getting the paperwork out of the way, my first priority of the day was to work on all the stuff that makes noise.  If noise wasn’t an issue, I would have worked on the canard first, then the nose NG30’s, and then the fuselage dolly.  But, since I can’t be making enemies of all my neighbors, or keeping the neighborhood awake with my plane-building shenanigans, then I need to prioritize to get my clanging & banging finished ASAP in the day.

I started off today working on the NG30’s for the nose.  I needed to get some minor stuff taken care of so I could glass the aft inboard side with a 2-ply BID layup.  This layup would serve 2 purposes:  1) It covers the depression made in the upper aft area of each NG30 to allow freedom of movement of the nose gear actuator housing, and 2)  It reinforces the aft inboard edge of each NG30 with 2 plies of BID to strengthen the NG30 when attached to the center post of F22.  This was a recommendation I received from Jack Wilhelmson back in 2012, so I of course complied!

The first of this required stuff was to drill the 1/4″ holes for the actuator mounting brackets in the right NG30, by using the left NG30 as a template to make sure the holes are perfectly aligned.  Once the NG30’s were aligned and clamped it took very little time to drill the holes.

The next order of business was to expand the NG30 upper holes that provide clearance to the main nose gear actuator connect bolts.  This expansion is a result of the boo-boo that I mentioned earlier where I overlooked Jack’s mandate that the holes on the edge of the actuator mounting brackets are required to have 3/8″ clearance from the edge of each bracket to the bolt hole.  I’m fairly certain I was using the original holes shown in the old plans NG51s (mount for mechanical nose gear retract assembly) for reference, and those didn’t have the proper clearance.  The bottom line is that since I had to move the holes on the mounting bracket further away from the edge, it caused an issue of bolt clearance in the very top open hole.  It needed about 0.15″ more space at the aft end of the hole.

As I was checking the spacing on the upper NG30 hole below with the actuator installed (see pic below), I also marked off the area of the upper NG30 that needed to be removed to allow the proper clearance of the nose gear actuator top motor housing (the anodized gold cap at the bottom of the actuator in pic below).

Here I’ve prepped the Dremel tool to use on expanding the upper holes.  The area marked at the bottom of the hole is the offending mass that must be removed!

The last task on my list before glassing the inboard NG30’s was to remove the area that I had marked off above to allow unhindered movement of the nose gear actuator.

I used my router with a 3/8″ “square” bit and freehanded the cutting into the NG30 tops.  I set the depth at just a hair over 0.2″ (say, 0.21″)

After using the straight bit, I used a “V” bit to bevel the edges of the depression.

I then set everything back up to ensure that the top of the nose gear actuator motor housing had plenty of space, which it did.

And I also checked that upper side holes provided the correct clearance for the main nose gear actuator attach bolt, which you can clearly see that it does below.

And finally, a shot from aft showing the clearance between the actuator motor housing and the sides of the NG30’s.

Here’s a couple of self portraits that I took with my Darth Vader-lite gear (I figure every now and again I should show the FAA that I was the guy actually doing the work!).

And here are the depressions ready for glass after I refined the beveled edges with the Dremel tool.

With the glassing ready to commence, I needed to make a template of the areas I intended on glassing.  I wanted to stay clear of the gear actuator mounting brackets (that bolt into the 3 hard points) as to not mess up the set internal dimensions of NG30 components (e.g. relationship between actuator mounts at the aft end of the NG30s and the NG6B, nose gear strut pivot at the forward end of the NG30s).

And then I had to do something that I haven’t done in quite a while . . . cut glass off the roll! After making the template, I calculated that I needed to cut two 15″ x 15″ squares of BID for the pre-preg setup.

Here’s the 2-ply BID pre-preg (“poor man’s”) setup ready to go.

And then I added epoxy–using fast hardener–to wet it out.

Once the BID was fully wetted out, I used the glass template that I had just made and cut out the two pre-preg setups for glassing the NG30s.

I realized if I had staggered the sides a little better, I could have conserved more BID . . . oops!

I then cut out the two BID pre-preg setups.

I set the “oops” section aside so it will cure flat, at which point I’ll use some of it later on by cutting it into 1/4″ strips to use as filler material when I have to increase the depth of both my stock strut cover (SC) and nose wheel cover (NB) that I bought from Feather Light… tweaking these parts is a second order affect that is a result of having to cut the gear strut channel deeper to get the nose wheel to set fully into the belly of the plane–which differs from the original plans where the nose wheel hangs down below the airplane by just a bit.

I then laid up the BID pre-preps on the inboard sides of the NG30s.  After ensuring the layups were good, I peel-plied the critical areas/edges.  As per my plan, I was able to just skirt the edge of the actuator mounts by about a 1/16″ to 1/8″.

I noticed after laying up the glass, that the glass at forward top of the depression would not lay flat on the foam on the right NG30.  I kept my eye on it and finally after messing around with the pesky glass for a few minutes, to no avail, I simply covered that area with Saran wrap, put some cushioning material on it to flatten out the invariable ridges from the plastic, and then threw a sandbag on it to keep the glass weighed down while it cured.

Now, onto more noise-making activities!

I pulled out the big dog to make some real noise!  This sucker will cut anything!

Here’s the stash of goodies that will turn into an operational fuselage dolly.

I pulled the canopy out and placed it into the fuselage dolly . . . it fit perfectly!

I then notched the sides to make a mount for the . . . ???

(what could it be?!)

Yes, it’s a scissor jack from Harbor Freight!  At last, my secret is out!

As you can see in the pic below, I offset the jack slightly off center, a few inches towards one end of the dolly to allow the extension to meet the side near the front corner.  This will allow me to operate the scissor jack being off to one side of the centerline and not have to work with an airplane nose or tail in my face.

Here’s another shot of the scissor jack.  When extended the scissor jack gives me a good 19″ of added height.  I think you can see where I’m going with this, so I’ll have the base table height, and when need be I can raise the fuselage up from around 2′ off the floor to around 4′ up.

Once I had the location figured out, I drilled the four 5/16″ holes for the carriage bolts.

I then installed the carriage bolts.

After cutting the top two 2×6 pieces for the screw jack mount, I also cut & installed another 2×6 support in the front inside at each corner on one end (I had already installed these at the other end).

With the inside 2×6 supports mounted, I was then able to finish installing the final two lag screws for the wheels at the corner.

I then cut some shed siding that I had sitting around & mounted it in place.  I left one top side open to use when I clean out the lower fuselage dolly before placing the canopy inside of the box.  It will then be sealed completely (via wood siding) to protect it.

Below is the last shot I took of the fuselage dolly in its latest state before I packed it back up in the garage and quickly changed to get on the road to see my buddy Doug.

My good friend Doug & I were Air Force Bomb Squad Technicians (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) stationed in England together back in the 1980’s.  It was great seeing him & catching up, and since he’s a pilot, we had some good conversations about a variety of Burt’s creations!

When I returned home after having dinner with Doug, I knife trimmed & sanded the edges of the NG30 layups from earlier.  I’m really happy with how they turned out & think that they will be very beneficial in their new state.

Tomorrow I plan on working on the outboard sides of the NG30s (more layups), the fuselage dolly and canard.