May 27, 2022     Engine and exhaust arrived - (10 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Drove to SweetGrass, Montana to pick up engine which arrived 2 days earlier from R&B Aircraft in Virginia. Brought it to Kyles hangar in YBW for storage until needed. Carb is at at my house. Also picked up Bearhawk Patrol exhaust by Vetterman from Sweetgrass and brought it to YBW.

  May 27, 2022     Fuel lines - (16 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Fuel lines in fuselage removed and discarded. New lines 3/8” aluminum lines bent and installed more work to go securing lines. Next is mounting fuel selector and gascolator. Fuel valve may have defective O ring seats (sort of cut up with the tap instead of a smooth seat for the o ring.

  May 27, 2022     Throttle quadrant mounting - (5 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Mounting of throttle quadrants. Modifying former mounting tab because throttle cable would penetrate the middle of the tab. Quadrants disassembled to fit between fabric on the outside and outer extremity of steel cage on the inside. One assembly bolt must be exchanged for a countersink #10 screw . Additional stringer material mounted below quadrants

  May 27, 2022     Doors - (20 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Door panels shaped and riveted on. Both pilot and cargo. Prep and some priming of floor boards

  Mar 30, 2022     Floor panels - (5 hours) Category: Fuselage

Stripped the last of the plastic film off the floor panels and started final cleaning to prep for paint. Did a little more work on the edges. Made a plan for cargo tie downs in the baggage compartment. Either eye-bolts in place of floor fasteners, clamping the floor and the steel frame tab in between two nuts, or flat pastel plates bolted down in the same fashion, with a tab bent up into the cargo space with a hole in it to accept a rope, chain link, or binged. Looking for 10-24 machine eye bolts. Can use hardware store variety or go with option B with AN-3A bolts and nuts. Front can be captured between the rear seat frame and the floor with an 5 bolts.

  Mar 27, 2022     Floor boards - (6 hours) Category: Fuselage

Finished fitting, primed, and painted floor boards with truck bed liner.

  Mar 25, 2022     Floor panels and windows - (10 hours) Category: Fuselage

Fitting Side window panels along top so they will swing freely up. One done, one to go. Floor panels all cut and started cleaning plastic off. Drilled to tabs in fuselage. Tried nutplates. Too much work, don't have enough. Will use for door trim only. Mark G says use Tinnermin nuts. Mule Fulton getting them for me. Cost is for window acrylic and fasteners. $140. Tinnerman nuts $20.

  Mar 25, 2022     More covering supplies Category: Fuselage

Bought more tapes, glue, primer, paint gun, painting supplies, some hardware, fabric irons from Wicks.

  Mar 25, 2022     Fabric, tapes, needle , rib stitching. Category: Fuselage

Bought all fabric some pinked tapes, scissors from ACS

  Mar 25, 2022     Fuel lines - (16 hours) Category: Fuselage

Fuel lines are not going satisfactorily. Used up almost all of my supply from Wicks but not happy with the fit. Bought 65 feet of voiled aluminum line from ACS. Starting over again.

  Mar 02, 2022     Floor panels - (3 hours) Category: Fuselage

Started trimming aluminum floor panels. First two will go in. Some trimming required. Not all of the factory cutouts are well-located due to vagaries in the tube structure. I will try it as is. If the holes in the floor are too big in some areas, I will just put a small doubler on top of the sheet metal panel which fits more closely around the tubing or other protruding element. I am intending to use k1000 nutplates and #6 round head screws to attach the panels to steel tabs on the tubing. Panels will be primed with rattle can self etching primer and then painted with rattle can colour for easy repainting when desired.

  Feb 26, 2022     Windows - (10 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Fixed a front swinging window which dropped off the table, denting the lower exterior sheet metal. More was purchased, fit, and riveted on.

Both swinging windows have the acrylic cut.

Otherwise progress has been slow, particularly installing fuel lines in the fuse. Weather has been too cold to wok outside. I have to order new tubing. Will try 3003 tubing in a couple from ACS. Hopefully I can make the compound bends more easily,

Rear windows are cut. The 2.5 mm acrylic will not fit in the slot between outer and inner frames. Some people including Avipro say pry it apart. So far no joy. I set up an angled table on a router table and then used it to chamfer the outer 1/2” of the acrylic pane. Still doesn't fit but much closer. Prying and more shaping may serve.

  Oct 19, 2021     Aluminum formers, stringers, window frames - (60 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Many entries consolidated here. Several months of part time fiddling, research and fitting to get the exterior levels of the plane established to accept fabric. Instructions would have saved many, many hours here. All the aluminum stringers bent and attached. Many had to be notched or raised above the tube work in order to accomplish the shape I wanted. I started with 3/16 rivets, but Dan York strongly suggested steel screws. I went with two #6 screws through the steel clip and both sides of the stringer in each location unles I wasn't able to get a screwdriver on. In those cases I used rivets and in one case, a machine bolt with a nut. Screws were cut to length and secured with blue locative. Aluminum formers permanently riveted in place. I'm a little concerned about the 1/8” slot between the rear window frames (where the window pane sits) being uneven in width and too tight in places to accept 3mm acrylic as well as a layer of fabric. I read somewhere that they could be pried and stretched apart as required, and Mark G verified this. A better way to go would have been to drill out the rivets holding the inner and outer window frames, attach the outer frame, cover, then rivet the inner frame back onto the outer with the window pane sandwiched in between. I will try prying the frames apart carefully with a large chisel or some other blade. I could also switch to 2.5 mm acrylic panes (probably will) and I could grind a chamfer on the outer edges of the acrylic pane with a grinder to ease the fit. Might have to do all three. Placement of sealant promises to be messy. Masking required.

  Jun 25, 2021     Final assembly of control sticks - (5 hours) Category: Fuselage

Control stick assembly needed cotter pins and castle nuts installed. It's unfortunately making contact on the inside of the assembly tube, so I will have to grind some of the bolt away to insure full freedom of movement with no drag

  Jun 25, 2021     Fuselage on rotisserie - (8 hours) Category: Fuselage

Rod S helped me rebuild the rotisserie so I could hang the fuselage on it. It took quite a bit of playing around to get the plane to balance, somewhat. It's about 20 lbs too heavy on the bottom, or the tail needs to go up another 3 inches or so, but I've run out of Room to do that. I tied a jug of water on it and it allows me to spin it quite easily, so it might be good enough.

  Jul 20, 2020     Elevator trim - (2 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Installed the elevator trim lever and then ran strings to verify trim cable runs. Avipro did not include enough nylon fairleads for the project so I ordered more from ACS. I realized tonight that do not have the required steel snap ring, so I contacted them to enquire about it. Maybe lock wire would work? Kind of potentially weak at the join though.

  Jul 18, 2020     Fuel plumbing - (4 hours) Category: Fuselage

Started mocking up the fuel system in the fuselage with heavy electrical wire to get a rough idea of tubing lengths, position of fittings, bend locations and angles. I seem to be stuck on how to get past the stringer near the bottom of the door and how to plumb around the floor, front doorpost, and the junction between the front and rear supply lines and the one which goes to the fuel selector.

  Jun 08, 2020     Rudder pedal cables - (5 hours) Category: Fuselage

Kieran and I built the rudder pedal cables which link front and rear pedals together. Cables from rear pedals to the rudder still have to be strung, but it seems best to wait until the rudder is mounted. Brother in law bob is going to build a pulley guard and mount which will fit in the first rudder cable fairleads aft of the pedals. Canadian authorities apparently do not do not like the fact that the rudder cable comes off the rear pedal, and after angling down to the floor, makes a bend of about 15 degrees, which is too much for a fairleads. I bought two more 2-inch pulleys and we will mount them in the fairleads hole, such that we don't have to weld anything new onto the fuselage.

  Jun 01, 2020     Rear brakes - (4 hours) Category: Fuselage

After talking with Mark G I gave up on installing heel brakes in the back. He set me up with two more Gerds master cylinders and we mounted them on the rudder pedals.

  May 14, 2020     Flap pulleys - (10 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Building a double pulley guard which also has an anti-rotation leg on it proved very elusive. There are about 8 bends required to fashion this little guy so that it will function properly and still mount to the both axel and frame. It seems unbelievable but I made 16 attempts and each time something prevented proper anchoring, smooth rotation, or sufficient strength. Way too many hours wasted on something which could easily have been provided for just a few dollars, like the wing pulley guards were, in my opinion.

Many homebuilder guides and other planes specify a cable guard without an anti rotation leg (seems like poor practice) or with the ends of the guard which are opposite the cable bent up along one of the edges of the hex nuts, using the edge of the bolt or nut as a straight edge to prevent rotation. (Glastar for example) I ended up going with the latter technique for the last pulley-the one in the centre before the “Y” which splits the single cable from the flap lever in the cockpit into two cables going to each wing torque tube horn. It's time to move on. Mark G is going to advise me on fuel tank tubing required prior to closeup. There is not much instruction on this item, so I will wait until I talk to him to start. Fuel lube (sealant) arrived today from ACS along with more snap bushings and nylon fairleads (my wicks hardware list called for 16, but in fact 20 are required. Mark sent the hundreds of nut plates required for all the inspection hatches, and they arrived today, along with another set of Brake master cylinders for the back rudder pedals. We need them for training ourselves. We were going to go with heel brakes but Mark said it would be too problematic to engineer this. We accepted his advice. If we really hate them we can remove them after we are all checked out.

  May 02, 2020     Flap system pulleys - (8 hours)       Category: Fuselage

There are 7 pulleys in the flap system. Each needs a cable guard and each cable guard needs to be fastened to a frame member or strut so it can't rotate and bind the cable. They are conceptually simple but I have struggled with making them accurately enough so they are effective, don't rub and anchor effectively. It's a bit of a special challenge and metal work is rather new to me. After many false starts and ruined cable guards, I now have 4 of them completed. It's fine, but I know that some people could knock one off in 15 minutes. I hope I am getting better at this, since there are a bunch more in the rudder and elevator trim system. And two more in the other wing which have yet to be mounted.

  Apr 30, 2020     Flap cable pulleys - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

The flap activation system uses a Johnson Bar style handle (like a 185 or cub) which pulls a cable which is routed through a system of 7 pulleys to the flap actuator arm at the wing root, and from there via a torque rod and pushrods to the flap.

Each pulley must be bolted onto a 1/4” tube which is welded onto the fuselage frame. They also require a cable guard so the cable can't skip off the pulley. The pulley guards are not provided for the fuselage pulleys, so I have to make them. I got some 22 gauge sheet steel at Lows, and also a $30 bending brake at Princess Auto seen here sitting on top of my jointer. (I will need it for other jobs including LE skin stiffeners). It works really well. I cut, bent, and drilled the first three pulley guards. They require a method to prevent rotation and subsequent jamming of the control cable. For the first two at the wing root, I elected to lock wire the pulley guards to the mounting tube using a cross-pattern. I tested the system with the bolt loose and it works. I doubled up with two independent lock wires. It doesn't look elegant but it will work. On other pulleys I will try to fashion a leg which can be secured to a tube to prevent rotation. I wrecked quite a few In the making because the tolerances are tight and I was unable to replicate the first one exactly. Small cheap pieces, but a big expenditure of time.

  Apr 11, 2020     Control tube - (2 hours)       Category: Fuselage

After much checking and research on the Bearhawk forum, we discovered that the rod end bearing at the elevator pushrod tube was contacting the idler fork so we did as others suggested and put a couple of little bushings adjacent the spherical bearing and then pressed them between the fork. This required opening up the fork to 3/4 inch. It fits nicely in there now.

  Apr 04, 2020     Fuselage control torque tubes - (2 hours) Category: Fuselage

Aileron and elevator torque tubes in place and functioning smoothly. Some cotter pins required: on the castellated nuts inside the torque tube and to hold the bushing in place at station ����

  Mar 30, 2020     Rudder pedals and brakes, flap control - (7 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Finished mounting both front and back rudder pedals. I'm intending to install heel brakes in the back so as not to have toe brake pedals standing up in the way beside the front seat. I haven't bought them yet. More research required.

Yesterday I couldn't mount master cylinders to brake pedals because the clevises on the Gerdes cylinders appeared be too short. Mark G advised that there are longer clevises supplied in the kit which fit without modification. Yup. They are provided! We found them and indeed they do fit. Perfectly! Rudder springs are not included, however. Mark advises that they are available in hardware stores, and not to get ones which apply a lot of tension. Just enough to stand the pedals up. All in all, I'm very pleased with the fit and finish of the rudder and brake components.

Tried to start on the control stick/torque tube assembly, but couldn't find instruction or plans showing how to attach to fuselage.

Assembled and installed flap actuator assembly. No spring found in kit for the button on the stick, so I have to find out what it is and where to find it.

  Mar 29, 2020     Rudder pedals - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Mounted front rudder pedals and started on brakes. Some removal of paint required, which Mark G told me would be needed. Little tweaks with a file, a couple of small holes to drill and the pieces are going together nicely. The Clevis on master cylinders is not deep enough to line the holes up with the attachment hole on the welded brake pedal. I need to verify if it's ok to file the washer-reinforced part on the pedal down until there is enough clearance. Alternatively, the slot in clevis could be cut deeper. This would reduce the amount of adjustment available though. Hole is about 1/8"" off so after filing I would be leaving only about 1/8"" of material adjacent the hole. Perhaps I could do a little of each.

Had a line on a compressor. Made an appointment. went to pick it up, and the guy had sold it.

  Mar 04, 2020     Assemble shock struts - (3 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Paul Y helped me clean, de-burr and assemble shock struts. Impossible with small snap ring plier. Borrowed a big one from a Trucker Daryl and it worked perfectly. Bought pipe cleaning brushes, emery paper, and automatic transmission fluid for shocks.

  Mar 02, 2020     Fuselage bones - (1 hour)       Category: Fuselage

Mounted the fuselage on casters so I can push it around the shop