For the right elevator at least.

I started off today by trimming the elevator 1-ply BID glass that I laid up last night.  I never made it back down to razor trim, so thank goodness it’s only one ply.  I then sanded the edges flush with the surrounding top & bottom skins.  I also had to cut out the glass over the NC-6 insert, and while doing so thought I should have stepped out of my paradigm and just glassed over all of it.  Oh, well, a few more minutes and I had what you see below.

I then turned my sights first on sanding the rough spots of the LE, and I then pulled the peel ply and sanded the TE.

I took my German Praktiker special hand saw and cut the channels for the hinges.  After the major cut, I cleaned up the channels with a razor blade and removed the duct tape over the hinge pin holes.

Below is a shot of the ancillary clean up, including the two hinge channels, the set screw hole at the close end and the torque office attach bolt hole at the opposite end.

With the elevator pretty much completed, I turned my sights on the outboard elevator weight.  I marked up a new foam spacer on the H100 foam piece I have on hand. I then cut it out and shaped it with 36 grit sandpaper.

I worked for about 10-15 minutes to get the foam spacer shaped properly, and then floxed the weight & foam spacer in place using the templates.   Now, interestingly enough the plans say that you can use 5-minute glue, but of course I didn’t think of this until I had a batch of flox mixed up and of course I just bought some last week.

Oh, well, I just had to wait a little bit longer to glass it with 2 plies of UNI.

A few hours later I cut out 2 strips of UNI and laid them up around the outboard elevator weight as per plans.  I then peel plied the layup before heading out for the evening.

When I returned everything looked good & cured.  I pulled the peel ply, razor cut the glass, and then hit the edges very briefly with sandpaper.  Here’s the end result.

And with that folks, I’m calling the right elevator rebuild complete!

Here’s a shot of the trimmed elevator as it looked when I started working on it today.

I pulled the elevator off the workbench and was happy that by using the foil tape I had NO divots on the top of my elevator foam.  In addition, you’ll note the blobs of 5 minute glue on the table.

For whatever reason the 5-minute glue blobs came off rather easily.  After about 5 minutes with a chisel and a razor glade the table was clean.

I then sanded the TE even.  After sanding I marked a line about 0.32″ forward of the TE for the glass-to-glass continuity between top & bottom elevator skins.

After removing the foam with my razor knife, i sanded down the TE glass with a sanding board.

I then Dremeled the remaining crud off the TE to finalize the prep.  And here’s the results: ha!

I again did a quick check of the top contour with the “H” template.

Although I forgot to do this on the bottom (Doh!) I did remember to add the depression in the foam for the UNI plies that attach the outboard elevator weight.

After I finished all the prep actions for the layup, I flipped the elevator over and applied foil tape to the underside of the elevator.  Again, I’m doing this to avoid all the issues I had with the previous elevator, and exactly the reason why I’m rebuilding this elevator!

After applying SMALL Bondo blobs to the foil tape pieces I mounted the elevator to the table and then weighed it down with sandbags.

After affixing the elevator to the workbench with Bondo I had about an hour to go before a work webinar so I started working on the nose gear actuator wiring since I knew I didn’t have enough time to finish the top elevator skin layup.

My first task was to pull off the motor side Molex connector, since I’ll be replacing it with an AMP CPC connector.

I then double-checked the charge on my nose gear back-up battery.  At 13.11V it looked good and seems to be holding its charge well.

While tracing out & connecting the wires for the nose gear actuator I was able to integrate & plan out the wiring for the gear & canopy warning module.  Basically, I figured out that I can use the up & down limiter “micro-switches” on the nose gear actuator to drive the warning signals to my gear/canopy warning module.  Of course the only issue is that I’ll need to order another AMP CPC connector.  No worries really, since I was going to have to do some finagling with the thick power wires to get them into the 9-pin AMP CPC connector.  A larger connector will be able to accommodate bigger wires.

After my webinar and playing around with the nose gear actuator wiring for a bit, I went back downstairs and vacuumed the foam before starting the layup.

I then micro’d the top elevator surface.

And laid up 2 plies of UNI at 30° in opposite directions.

Since I used fast hardener I only had to wait about an hour before the layup was cured to a green stage.  I then razor trimmed the TE.

And then applied dry micro on the TE and covered it with peel ply.

I turned on a heat lamp to help get this thing cured as fast as possible.

After watching some TV and working on this post for well over an hour, I then went down to the shop to check the elevator top skin layup.  It all looked good and was pretty much cured.  I carefully pulled the elevator away from the table mainly to keep the TE micro from securing the elevator permanently to the workbench and causing real mayhem if I had waited until tomorrow to pull it off the bench.

After pulling the foil tape off the elevator bottom I was ecstatic that the elevator bottom was SO clean & devoid of that Bondo crap that caused all the issues with the previous elevator! I couldn’t help but think how EZ this would have been had I known this trick back when I first built my elevators!

My next order of business was to cut away any stray LE glass overlap to keep any of the barbs-from-hell, that may have slipped past the peel ply, at bay.  I also cleaned the blobs of Bondo off the table.  Which thankfully came off fairly easily.

After cleaning up the LE, I then pulled the peel ply from the outboard weight depression.

I then checked the contour again, only this time obviously with the top skin glassed.  Looking good!

I then focused on the outboard elevator in order to prep that area for the 1-ply BID layup that it will receive.  I sanded the glass edges square and even with NC-6.

I stood the elevator up on end & cut the foam to create a wedge shape near the glass for the flox corners.

I grabbed a piece of scrap BID and cut it to roughly fit the end of the elevator.

I then mixed up some epoxy with fast hardener, made some flox for the corners & some micro for the foam.  I then laid up the 1 ply of BID, trimmed the glass a little and let it cure.

In a couple of hours I’ll check the layup and razor cut the edges.

Tomorrow I plan to finish the elevator rebuild by sanding the TE to its final shape and also attaching the outboard elevator weight.  Then it will just be a matter of cutting, drilling & cleaning up the hinge slots & bolt holes and the elevator rebuild will be complete!

Today I focused entirely on the elevator.  Below is the elevator core micro’d to elevator tube.

I prepped the tube by taping up the holes in the hinge pin hard points (NC2s) and the elevator tube end insert (NC6).

Before glassing the bottom skin I lightly sanded the bottom front edge of the foam core where it intersects with the elevator tube.  I also cleaned up the micro at the seam between the two elevator foam core pieces.

To minimize any damage to the foam surface, and thus minimize backfills to the foam, delams and in turn weight, I applied foil tape to the surface of the elevator top.  I figured I would try this method instead of applying 5 minute glue directly to the foam.

I then quickly checked the bottom contour of the elevator.

And then mixed up some 5 minute glue, applied a good sized drop to each piece of foil tape, and attached the inverted elevator core to the work bench.  I weighed down the TE with sandbags.

After the 5-minute glue cured, I did a final check on the foam before I glassed it.

I also checked the UNI glass to ensure it fit.  I then glassed the lower elevator skin 2-ply UNI layup using fast hardener.

Here’s the (new) glassed bottom of the elevator.

Here are some shots of the finished elevator bottom, in various stages of razor trimmed glass.

I was going to glass the top skin of the elevator as well, but I went out to dinner tonight and it took forever to get our food, so I just didn’t make it back in time to fire up the Dremel tool to trim the TE in order to get good glass-to-glass contact between top & bottom skins.

Tomorrow I’ll prep the elevator & glass the top first thing, and if all works out I’ll actually get the outboard elevator end glassed as well.

Today the UPS guy showed up with the battery charger I ordered from Amazon last week. I ordered this battery charger because in reading the manual for the Odyssey PC680 battery it stated that if the battery charge fell below 12.65 volts, than it needed to be charged before using it.  When I checked the battery the multimeter showed 12.57 volts, clearly below the threshold required to be able to use the battery as per the instructions.

Of course I knew I would need a battery charger eventually since the Odyssey PC680 is an Absorbed Glass Mat (AGM) type that is immune from acid spills and gas venting, and thus has some unique charging requirements to ensure the battery is maintained in an optimized state before it’s actual use in the Long-EZ.  An interesting side note to this battery is that it can be mounted in any position.

Currently, the main reason I want to use the battery is to test the nose gear actuator.  So when the battery voltage tested low I checked the Odyssey website for approved battery chargers.  After assessing a few battery chargers online, I decided on this one and ordered it.

I hooked up the battery to the new charger before heading out to a meeting I had at the office. Before I left for my meeting I went upstairs and changed clothes –about 5 minutes– and when I did a final check before walking out the door the charger had already completed its first 2 phases and was in the basic charging phase.  This was a good sign since the initial phases are conditioning cycles that bring a battery back to the point where it can simply be charged in phase 3, where again, my battery was before I even left the house.  By the time I returned about 2 hours later, the battery was fully charged and was at 13.87 volts.  Not bad!

I’m discussing the battery at this point since the short term use of the battery is to test the nose gear actuator (Chapter 13) while of course the long term use will simply be as the aircraft’s primary power source (Chapter 22).

I then focused on the new elevator build.  I pulled the elevator tube out of the vinegar-filled PVC pipe and did a final clean on the tube.  I then washed down the elevator tube with Simple Green before taking it outside to Alodine it.

I washed out the PVC pipe, filled it full of Alumaprep, and then submerged all but about 18″ of the elevator tube into the Alumaprep.  Since my Alodine chemicals are weak, I left the tube in the Alumaprep for about 8 minutes before taking it out, rinsing it with water and giving it a good scrub.  I then put it back into the Alumaprep with the other end in first.

After the Alumaprep wash, I rinsed down the tube and did the same process in PVC pipe #2 filled with Alodine.  Again, I left it in there way longer than normal, about 8 minutes per side since the Alodine was weak.  After the time had passed, I again gave the whole tube a good rinse with clean water.

I hung the freshly Alodined elevator tube up to dry and then began to prep for micro’ing the elevator foam core to the tube.

Now, I was seconds away from taking a picture of the Alodined elevator tube when my long lost buddy Greg showed up.  Unfortunately when I loaded up all my pics at the end of the evening I realized I hadn’t taken the picture, which is unfortunate because I thought the Alodined tube turned out rather well.

As for the foam cores, since I ordered only the elevator cores from Steve at Eureka CNC, he could only send me the cores cut in half for shipping purposes.  The pics below are shots of one elevator core cut in half.

Here are the two halves end to end.

I marked the second elevator foam core piece to cut to length, making the total combined length of these elevator foam core pieces 53″ to match the length of the elevator tube.

I then did a quick check of the top elevator contour with template “H” and it looked good.

Here’s a pic with the elevator core pieces cut to the proper 53″ length. [Note: these are the correct length of MY elevator cores for this airplane, since I widened the fuselage at all the bulkheads, my F22 & F28 are just a hair wider than the stock plans dimensions.  This widened fuselage resulted in slightly shorter elevators.]

And here’s the two elevator core pieces micro’d to the elevator tube.  Yes, the elevator reconstruction is under way!

As per plans I weighed down the elevator core & tube with sandbags to keep them firmly in place.

Tomorrow I plan to glass the bottom skin, and possibly the top skin, of the elevator.

After a meeting I had in the office earlier today I ran over to Maryland to pick up a different brand of boat paint.  I’m going to do some tests and will report back on the entire plan later on.

Upon returning home I took the elevator tube out of the PVC tube filled with white vinegar and flipped it over to get the untouched 25% into the vinegar.  I cleaned off the majority of gunk with paper towels, then grabbed my razor knife and started cleaning off the dead glass.  I got as far down as the second hinge hardpoint (NC2).

After getting as much of the soaked dead glass off the tube as possible, I set the elevator tube back into the PVC tube filled with vinegar to soak.

After I put the elevator tube back in the vinegar cleaning solution, I then sanded the canard surface starting with 80 grit on the long board, and then switched to 120 grit on the long board as well.  I then switched to 150 grit paper and hand sanded each swoosh tip.

I was still getting a fair amount of residue on the sandpaper and had to clean it off the paper at regular intervals.  After going through another few sheets of very expensive long board sandpaper (although tonight was much better than last night as far as residue buildup), I decided to wait until tomorrow to finish sanding the top of the canard after it’s cured just a bit more.

In addition, I’m going to hit the canard with another couple coats of primer of the new boat paint.  I can tell already that this new primer is much more high build than my current primer, and of course you always need a good base of primer preferably of the same brand.  In light of this, I really want to get this primer sanded down to where the canard shape is as close to final as possible, and then smoothed out even more once the new primer is applied.

I then broke out the new paint to try it out.  As I said before as I was looking at the actual color of the white boat paint I had ordered before, in contrast with the white label on the gallon can and a standard white piece of paper, it clearly looked off white.  To compare and contrast the new paint I sanded down half of the headrest GPS antenna cover with 220 grit paper, and then painted it with the new paint.  I have to say that A) the new boat paint went on much easier and laid down much better than the old boat paint, and B) the new paint seems to have more of a “blue” hue vs a “yellow” hue, as you can see below. The bottom line is that the new paint is simply whiter, in my opinion.

Here’s a couple shots of the elevator tube in its current state.  I would say it’s about 90% clean, and after I shot these pics I put it back in the PVC tube to soak in the vinegar over night.

Finally, here are a couple of shots of the canard with nothing but a single light reflecting on its surface.  This provides a good view of the imperfections currently on the top surface of the canard.  As you can see, there are few minor imperfections –mainly simple & minor surface depressions– on each side of the canard top.

Tomorrow I plan on doing a final clean of the elevator tube, sanding down the surface, and then Alodining it in prep of micro’ing the elevator core to it.  I will also do a final sanding of the current primer on the canard top in prep of laying down a couple coats of the new primer.  I’ll then let the new primer cure 24-48 hours before giving it a final sanding.

Or rather the canard!

I started out today by sanding the pure epoxy coat on the topside of the canard.  I began with 120 grit on the long board in a 45° pattern, both to the left and to the right.  After I sanded both sides with the long board, I then switched to 220 grit and wet sanded the epoxy finish.  This helped get the lower lying areas that should get filled with the high build primer.

Here’s a shot of the right side.  For some reason the blog didn’t like the left side pic since I couldn’t load it.  Needless to say, it looked about the same.

I then applied primer to the canard.  The shot below to the left is the first coat, and the right is the second coat.

In between priming the top of the canard, and watching football, I cut out the 2 phenolic support pieces that will be embedded in the NG30 cover for the AMP CPC connectors.

I also cut the 8 pieces of UNI for the new elevators that I will be rebuilding here in the next week.

In total I added 3 coats of primer.  I’ll wait until its cured tomorrow to block sand it.

Also, as I was prepping the canard for primer I happen to really note the color of the boat paint on the headrest GPS antenna cover and the ice shields.  It’s not a bright white, as the primer is not, so I’ll be calling Jamestown Distributors this week to figure out the way ahead on that.  I want the white on my bird to be as white as possible… not the 1970’s dull off-white stuff.  So I’ll be evaluating the paint further as I move forward.