Oct 16, 2019     practice - (6 hours) Category: Research

Over the last week or so, I built a flange straightening tool, a rack to hold the h/s vertical for assembly, and a few other things. I had the old h/s completely taken apart, and had a ton of old -3 rivets that came with the used stuff I bought, so I decided to put 1/2 of it back together again, just for the practice. Went well with no catastrophe, and at some point I might think about making a coffee table or something out of it.

Tomorrow morning, I'll start prep work for the new h/s

  Sep 25, 2019     Rivet set mark on R/H elevator. - (0.5 hour)       Category: Research

The previous owners had a riveting mishap on the r/h elevator outboard. Looks like the set got away from them and left a set mark in the skin, which I'm not thrilled about but it's not worth scrapping the skin for if I can use as is. My concern is that the set also put a crease in the head of the -3 flush rivet at that location. Damaged heads on flush rivets are usually a no-no, and I could replace that rivet easily enough, but I'm not sure that it would set down in the dimple.

Cosmetically, this will clean up no problem with sand and fill during paint prep, so this may be a case where the cure is worse than the illness. I emailed Vans tech support to see what they think.

edit- Sterling Langrell from Van's Tech Support just emailed me back;

"Does not look bad enough to warrant replacing, a little deburring and you should be good to go."

  Sep 10, 2019     inspection/research - (6 hours)       Category: Research

When I bought this kit, there were several things that were really nice about it, but also some stuff that I wasn't thrilled about. Overall, the sheetmetal work is quite good, and they primed everywhere that I would have. But, there are a few areas where they had mishaps. I made my offer accordingly and can afford to do some rework.

I went through the loose parts that came with it and have pretty much everything I'm supposed to have with the exception of the rod ends to make the big aileron pushrods. The tube stock to make the pushrods & the angle for the fuselage longerons are still wrapped up. I also got all of the hardware that they had left over, nicely sorted and marked. I can use most of it but I'm not thrilled with trying to drive 13 year old rivets. There's a good chance that they've age hardened to a point that the heads could tend to crack, so I'll probably save those for nut plates or whatever and use new rivets for anything serious that hasn't already been done or that I need to rework. Rivets are cheap.

The last entry in their maintenance log was from 2008, so this stuff has been collecting dust for a long time. In addition to a visual inspection of the exterior, I bought a borescope so I could take a peek inside and see if there were any surprises. Turns out a borescope that will link to my phone is only $36 on Amazon. I can't believe how cheap tech has become. The interior of both wings are quite clean with no birds nests, mouse droppings etc. The rivet tails look good and the ribs/spars aren't beat up or anything. Found some cobwebs and a dead grasshopper that kinda freaked me out until i realized what it was. Looked as big as a kitten on the scope.

Here are the issues I've noted:

H/S- left trailing edge has an extra hole, probably from a dimpling mishap. Their solution was to install an extra rivet which is way too close pitch-wise to the one that's supposed to be there. It's through both the skin and the aft spar flange.

Right elevator- outboard, a slipped rivet set left a slight dent on the skin and cut the rivet head.

Left elevator- upper side of trim tab and adjacent skin has some black marks that look like it's probably corrosion where they've likely scratched the alclad by moving the surface with chips on the table.

Rudder- slipped set and a minor dent up at the top row.

Wings- the outbd lower skin on the left side is clecoed on, and already cut for a pitot mast one bay inbd of the aileron bell crank. I believe this is the location that the plans call out, but thats for a bare bones vfr pitot. It makes the routing of the lines simple, but may cause some problems with getting the metal lines & electric from a heated pitot tube to not interfere with the aileron pushrod.

Wings- the inbd lower right wing skin has a couple of pretty noticeable set marks at the aft spar, pretty much dead center in the skin (span-wise). This is a little annoying. Since that wing is already closed up, it would be a ton of work to redo that one for just a couple of dents. Since it's on the underside of the wing, I'm inclined to just leave it, but I don't want it to crack there and the scope shows that the flange isn't laying flat underneath and the rivet where it slipped is under driven. That will require a call to Vans to see how to proceed.

Wings- The original owners worked on this kit from 2006-2008 at that time there wasn't the variety of landing light solutions that we have today. They were going to fab their own solution and they cut elliptical holes in each outbd bay leading edge that are 6" wide and approx the same chord wise. I'm going to have to find out what the dimensions of the duckworks leading edge lens is. Hoping it's big enough that I can rework this ellipse into something more normal shaped without having to fab up my own lenses.

Just a note to myself here- I hung plumb lines on these wings as they are standing in the cradle and measured them for twist. They are already rigid, so I don't see why I'd need to build a fixture just to check for twist. I measured both of them several times and they appear to have no measurable twist in either one. Maybe 1mm at the most, but that could just as easily be measuring the string in a different plane.

I'll attack these issues one at a time and make individual entries in the appropriate sections of this log

  Sep 09, 2019     service bulletins - (3 hours) Category: Research

After a ton of review of plans, prints, & completed assemblies, I've determined to complete the following service bulletins on the used wing and empennage kits that I bought. I think it makes sense to do them now so that I don't have roll them into the annual inspection and then potentially have to ground and do rework on a flying and painted airplane.

SB14-01-31Horizontal Stabilizer Cracks
SB14-02-05 Cracks in Elevator Spar
SB16-03-28 Cracking of wing aft spar web at the inboard aileron hinge bracket attach rivets.
SB06-02-23 Safetying of standard and flop-type fuel pickup tubes (probably already done- need to check)

Everything else is just confirming that standard practices have been followed, the right hardware used etc. I'll check all that stuff but don't expect any problems.

  Sep 07, 2019     Picked up used wing& empennage kit - (4 hours)       Category: Research

On 09-07-19 Craig Noah helped me pick up the empennage & wing kit. I say helped, but he supplied the truck, trailer & moving pads. All I had to do was cover breakfast afterward. Pretty sweet deal.

I bought this kit from two brothers here in ICT, one is an engineer at NIAR and the other works for Airbus in some capacity. They've been working on this since 2006 and have it mostly completed with the exception of one wing skin and the fiberglass work. I also got a DRDT-2 dimpler in the same deal.

After looking all over the country for a second hand kit, I found this one pretty much in my backyard so it was no problem to make two trips. We wrapped the flight controls & loose stuff loose in moving blankets and just laid them flat on the trailer floor, then came back for the wings. They just got moved in their stand by screwing it to the floor of the trailer and then padding them with moving blankets to keep them from swaying. Also used several straps to make sure everything stayed in place.

It was only about 5 miles to my house on city streets. If we were going X/C I probably would have done it a little differently, but it worked out okay. No damage in transit apparent.

We just set everything in the garage and then I ran over to harbor freight and picked up a bunch of moving blankets so I could give the other ones back to Craig.