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N18451

xblueh2o

Well Known Member
No pictures yet (mostly because I have not set up an account to host them) but after a couple of days getting everything ready I finally cracked open the boxes of the Emp kit. Inventory went off without a hitch and I had the rear spar pretty much built up in two hours. Only problem is I have to go to work tomorrow and then travel to Texas to sit sim support for a friend so I will be off it a few days but at least I am finally building.
 
Finally got around to getting a picture host.

The boxes
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After a couple days bench building and organizing it is time to open the box
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And about two hours later I had one of these
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After a few days at work I came back to the hangar. I learned a few things making this half and the other half went together in no time. Many thanks to those of you who offered suggestions and answered my many questions.
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Excuse the lousy cell phone pic. Forgot the camera at home.


Today's progress was to get the vertical stab built up.
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Forgot the camera at home, AGAIN.
I am gone the next couple of days and when I get back I will break the stabs down for prep. My plan is to chromate the internals.
 
AWESOME!!!

Hey Sam.....Congratulations!!!

I just got my tail (bought it used) and getting ready to start myself. Heading down the basement in a couple minutes. I had to do some basement prep but now it's about time to start the build!
I was able to find a deal on a QB wings and fuse too....so I have plenty of work and the shop is just about ready!!!

Are you building in a hanger...or a mini storage? Looks like storage to me:D

Best wishes on the build!!!

YOL BOLSON!!!!
 
I bought a DRD2 for this project (money spent on good tools is never wasted). With the dimpler came the instructions for building the support platforms that sit on either side while working to support the material. As you all know the plans call for making the platforms out of plywood or MDF and they have four legs. Well, wood and I just don't get along very well. I consider it an inferior hydrocarbon and not worthy of my time. I asked a co-worker who loves working with wood if he would make them for me. He agreed. A couple days later he shows up at work with the finished product he made from scraps lying around his shop. Instead of the four legs he built square bases. The base ends are made from hard maple and the sides are birdseye maple or quarter sawn red oak. The tops are MDF but he routed the edges so nothing would catch on it. All of this is topped with four coats of polyurethane. The sharp eyed among you may have noticed the two bases are not the same size. He built them so the two pieces nest together to take up less room when not being used.
I am not sure I want to use these. I may just take them home and stare at them.

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The Paint booth

Work has been getting the way of my days off quite a bit recently. I finally got the back shop at the house cleaned up the other day and I had a free afternoon today so I started building the paint booth. I got some cheap linoleum from the local big box store so I will have a dust free floor and I won't ruin my concrete with paint. Took a while to get the basic frame up but progress was made and I consider it a win. I'll have a little time in the afternoon again tomorrow so I am hoping to at least start getting it wrapped and sealed. I am still designing in my mind the exhaust system that has to carry the exhaust from the back shop, 35 feet through the main shop to the outside.

Floor down and the basic frame up. It will be about 9'X15' and about 10' high.
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Work is still getting in the way of my days off recently and we had a mini heat wave come through. I just couldn't bring myself to work inside the booth to finish it up when it was 104 outside and probably hotter in the booth, even with the fans running full bore.

Anyway, got the parts for the horizontal stabs washed, etched, alodined and hung in the booth. You can see part of the rear spar stiffener in the lower right hand corner of the pic. I need to rearrange where the spars are hanging and get the skins hung but I am nearly ready to spray. The alodine is much more even than the picture would lead you to believe. I also waited and took this picture at night with no flash because I wanted to see what kind of light was in the booth with only shop lights on. Looks like I could spray at night if I needed to.
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I will be applying a Sherwin Williams aerospace coating. CMO72440. It's a corrosion resistant epoxy primer. It goes on very thin (read light, as in it won't weigh much). The idea is to coat areas with the corrosion resistant primer which, once assembled, will be inaccessible.
 
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Very slow but measurable progress.
The end of the year holiday season is a very busy time at work so I didn't get much time to work on the parts. Little bits here and there and none of it would make for very interesting pictures. Today however was another story. I had a half day in the hangar with no interruptions and made good progress.
I built up the rear spar for the HS (BTW, did anybody else baulk at using -4 length rivets to attach the 412PP to the 603PP/609PP? Measuring the rivet tail when installed had the -4 as a tad too short and -5 as too long. I ordered some -4.5s so we will see).
Once the two spars were done I started on the skin.
First two rivets down and goodness only knows how many left to go.
Man, those scratches look really bad in this pic. Rest assured they are just scuffs in real life.
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I got the nose rib top and bottom riveted and stopped there. I want another set of eyes to come by and take a look before I close the skin up so a friend of mine who is an A&P IA is going to drop by and look over the work to date. Since I stopped mid stream I left myself a note so I wouldn't forget the 3 bind rivets for the HS 702/707/708.
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Realized that I had not posted an update in a while. Some nice progress has been made to date so here we go.

Here is the Horizontal Stab in work. Thank goodness for tungsten bucking bars. I have big hands so getting my hands plus a standard steel bar in the stab would have been fun. This would have been so much easier with a second person to either drive or buck.
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I kept track during the build up.
When all was said and done these were the removals for the horiz stab.
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I am going to do the Showplanes Fastback conversion so I needed to modify my vertical stab. It involves trimming a bit off the area on the bottom of the leading edge forward of the spar. In this picture I have actually drawn the line in the wrong place. I started the angle from the front face of the spar instead of the rear per the instructions. I cleaned the marks up and re-drew them but forgot to take a new picture. What I was doing here was checking MED on existing holes to see what problems I might run into.
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I could never find a simple solution to the MED problem plus the stock rib just didn't fit very well in the new shape of the leading edge so I decided to make a new nose rib with wider flanges to solve my MED problem. The first thing I did was cleco up the complete vert stab and then just cut and trimmed a piece of cardboard to the shape of the new rib area. I compared it to the old rib and checked it for symmetry. After some minor adjustments I had a shape I was happy with so now it was time to convert it to metal. I made a buck from wood to the shape I wanted and undersize by the thickness of the material I would use to make the new rib. I made a test rib out from non-heat treated hardware store alloy to ensure my buck was the right size and shape.
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As I mentioned earlier I knew I would have MED issues with the standard flange width so I made my new rib with a 3/4" wide flange. You can't see it well in the picture but the wood you can see in this stack up is dimensionally slightly smaller than the buck, then the test alloy, then the actual buck and then a third even smaller shaped piece of wood on the bottom.
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Here is a picture of the first test rib after about a minute of shaping. You can see the stack up. You will also notice I forgot to shape the end correctly in the flat pattern so I ended up with an incorrect final shape after forming. This is why I wanted to make a test rib from cheap stock first. Get the pattern right before you make it for real.
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I think this is test rib number two (I did three test ribs) installed. I can see marks to further adjust the pattern.
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Once I had the flat pattern right I made the real rib out of the correct heat treated allow and finished up the vertical stab. Unfortunately I cannot find any assembly pics. The only thing I have is this shot with the fixed surfaces complete.
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The rudder was interesting. After I started building it up to do the initial metal work I started looking at the lower spar/rudder horn area. I knew this was going to interesting to build up so I spent quite a bit of time searching the forum, asking questions and reading other build logs. Got some great tips from VAF folks and found lots of good ideas.

One of the first things I found out the hard way was to not blindly follow the directions. I trimmed my R-710 the way the plans showed then installed it. Out of curiosity I took a sharpie and drew the hole locations on it through the skin. That old MED monster had struck again, not even close. Came home and found out through searching that I was not the only one to make this mistake. I opted for the $10 dollar lesson learned and ordered a new one. When the new one arrived I slowly started taking it down until it just fit. This is the point where it just fits. The drawn line is the MED from the edge to the center of the rivet holes. The dots are where the holes will be when drilled using the skin as a guide. The short perpendicular lines are the MED from the skin rivet hole locations to the ends or the hole in the middle.
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Once everything was mocked up, all the metal work was done, everything prepped and primed it was time for assembly. I had used this trick for placing rivets in hard to reach places before on other projects and saw it mentioned in another builder's blog. It works well for installing these rivets with the orientation of the factory head on the thinner material. I used the pneumatic squeezer with a longeron yoke and a 1/2" set to get the rivets in this area.
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Once I had the stiffeners back riveted to the skin and the skeleton done it was time to bend the trailing edge. I took an 8' 2X6, sawed it in half and planed one side of the 2" surface flat and square.
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I had read the opinions regarding using a dowel during the bending process and decided to try it. I tried to put the dowel in the bend but I found that it was most likely going to cause damage to the ends of the stiffeners when I started squeezing (or at least it looked like it would) so I ditched that idea. I ended up using the the dowel though to set the trailing edge straight and square in my brake. The other advantage is that it gave me a repeatable installation position so I wasn't worried about taking the skin out to check.
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Lay the dowel against the hinge, put the bend against the dowel and hold the skin down then remove the dowel. Viola, your skin is in the same place every time with the added bonus of not being able to crush the bend flat.
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On the first squeeze I ended up with the skin holding this sort of shape with regard to the spar.
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When the assembly was cleco'ed together the trailing edge was shaped like this. Not bad but I knew I had room to improve it.
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I squeezed the skin a little more and got very nice results on one side but the other still showed a slight bend towards the edge. I realized that the straight side had always been on the top while the curved side had always been on the bottom in the brake so I turned the skin over and kissed it again. Worked like a charm. Side one.
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Side two.
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To compare, this is how the skin lay with no clecos in the top after the final squeezing.
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Once it was all cleco'ed up I took a look. The picture sort of makes it look like there is a slight bend but according to a long straight edge it is bang on straight.
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I ended up using four blind rivets. Two in the very nose of the bottom rib (seen here at the top of the picture) and two in the very back of the rudder horn brace where I couldn't get any squeezer I had in there and there was no way I was getting my hand through the hole. Right now the rudder is done except for rolling the leading edge and obviously the glass work which I will leave for later. I am busy all this week so I won't get back to work on it until the weekend or next week. I have all the metal work done for the right elevator and the parts are at the house waiting for etch alodine and prime.
 
Work has a way of getting in the way of getting solid build time in.
Finished off the right elevator and began on the left. I spent quite a bit of time reading about the trim tab and the never ending debate of bending or riblet. I decided to try bending and if I just could not make it work for me I would build riblets. I bent up my first end and was pleased with the results. I had just put the bending fixture in the other end of the tab when the lunch bunch dropped by so I stopped and joined them. When I got back everything was ready to go so I got out the hammer and hardwood block and started bending. Turns out I hadn't quite got the fixture secured tight enough before going to lunch. Oh well, I took it as a $20 lesson.
The second trim tab turned out nice.
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It fit well on the elevator.
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Once the left elevator and trim tab were done it was time to mount everything to the horizontal stab.
I had not yet trimmed the skin on the ends in the area of the counter balance because I didn't know exactly how far I needed to go. Once I had the elevators on and adjusted I removed the excess. I ended up removing right at 1" of material.
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With the elevators adjusted and the horizontal stab skin trimmed the counter balance arms look like this.
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After tons of futzing I ended up with the elevator horns being very very close but not quite equal. I asked Van's and they said it's normal. Build on.
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I drilled the horns for the center bushing. I have seen in threads and build logs where some people experience bolt clearance issues here. I must have been lucky. It is close, I can't get the box end of a wrench on it but an open end or socket works just fine.
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Washer wrenches, my new favorite tool.
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QB Fuselage and wings arrived today. Didn't do anything other than take out all the packing paper (remind my to buy stock in weyerhaeuser or whoever supplies that stuff to Vans because they most go through a ton of it).
Took this picture after I had rolled up half a dozen or so sheets of the packing paper.
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Sweet Mother of God! The landing gear must weigh over 50 pounds. Starting to seriously consider the Grove gear. One piece, two piece, airfoil. Time to research.
 
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Good news bad news.
Good news. Was given an additional position at work today that includes a not insignificant raise. :D
Bad news. I will have even less time for building than I have had over the last few months which has been not much to begin with. :(

I have only managed to get the pitot mount mocked into place, but at least it is forward progress so I will take it.
 
Realized I have not made an update in a while.
Little bits of progress and some random pictures.

I was an early adopter of the Aero LED Aerosun VX.
Here is the nearly finished hole and the cutout. Sorry about the lousy pic. Trying to hold things and manage the camera didn't work very well.
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The more or less completed installation.
I have a small 12v battery in the hgr for just this kind of stuff. I went out one night and hooked the lights up and was impressed by the amount of light. I walked out onto a dark taxiway and I think it will be great.
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Fun with fuel tanks.
I took a look at the fuel pickups that came with my QB wings. When they were made they were bent, cut to length, ends crimped closed and then the multiple slices were made. The insides were so full of swarf that I decided to go with the optional screen type. My first go with proseal. Gotta say, not a fan.
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I decided to go with welding the short aileron bellcranks. I got everything prepped for welding and went to visit a friend who is fabricator extraordinaire. In this pic you can sort of see a tool he built years ago for welding tubes. It is essentially the jaw from a small metal lathe mounted to a geared motor that he can control the speed of rotation. The idea is to have the part turning slowly but steady so you need merely strike the arc and not move the welder. The tube moves automatically.
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The parts as welded before further prep for re-paint.
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Installed in the wing.
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I have decided to use AOA and not use a stall vane. Since the QB wings came with holes pre-punched for the installation of the stall vane I needed to close them up. Many suggestions on technique were offered and I decided to fill them with rivets. I countersunk the skin for NAS1097 rivets and went to work.
There are two rivets in the leading edge. One is visible in the pic. The other, not so much. I am very pleased with the end result. Once primer is applied for paint you will never know there were holes there.
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This pic is the same two rivets as the pic above. I have set them both and have just started to dress them smooth.
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Getting the pitot mast installed.
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I mounted the ailerons and got everything pretty much set then went about getting ready to mount the flaps. The trailing edges are nearly perfectly aligned. They were perfect before drilling the hinge but now there is an ever so slight difference on the order of a couple thou of an inch. Less than the thickness of a piece of paper.
Flap trailing edge. The two vertical sticks are 1/4" dowel setting the distance to the aileron.
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I elected to go with the split pin mod for the flap hinge. Shamelessly stole other builders idea for controlling the loose ends of the pins.
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That's about it for pictures. I have started in on the fuselage. Pics as interesting things happen.
 
Was having issues with getting pics uploaded to photobucket so I haven't done an update in a while. Found a workaround so here is what I have been up to.

No pics of the process but I decided to do the cockpit floor plate nut mod. Yes, it's time consuming but it fit my overall construction philosophy which is to build in reliability and maintainability.
A quick shot with the floors and seats in and the fastback turtle deck on.
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Years ago the local hardware store used to carry a line of work gloves I liked. They came in five sizes. Small, Medium, Large, XL and Giant. Giant was the only size that fit my hands so I knew I would be doing the gear tower mod.
What I did was measure and draw on the face of the gear tower where the underlying structure was and where the screw holes needed to go. Once I was happy with where everything was going to be I transferred all those measurements to a cover plate made from construction paper. I stuck a flashlight down the gear tower to ensure I was registered correctly. Once I was happy with the placement I took a punch and made marks on the paper cover that would transfer to the gear tower face where I wanted the screw holes to be and confirmed that the paper template was going to put the holes on metal where I wanted them.
This pic is actually gen 1 on the template. I missed that the hole at one o'clock would be half covered because the blue tape was covering it. I noticed it when I started to take it apart. You can see the slight change in shape between the paper template and the metal cover.

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Once I was confident that the holes would be where I wanted them I made a cover plate. I drew everything on the blank plate as a direct transfer from the paper version since I knew the paper version was correct. I then drilled on the bench top all the holes in the cover plate to #40. Then I put the drilled cover plate on the gear tower using my registration marks. I double triple and quadruple checked everything and then using the cover plate as a drill jig I match drilled to #40 the gear tower. Once I had all the holes drilled to #40 I went back around and match drilled the plate and tower for #8 screws. Break out the plate nut drill jig and drill all the screw holes for plate nuts. Dimple the tower screw holes, countersink the plate nut rivet holes and install the plate nuts. Since the plates and towers were match drilled to each other they fit perfectly.

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I waited until I had all the riveting done before I removed the web. Don't know if that was really necessary but that's the way I did it.

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Next picture worthy step was mounting the tail.
Just started following the directions. Leveled the fuselage laterally and longitudinally then placed the horizontal stab in place and clamped it up.

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Ran into a problem. I discovered my QB fuselage had a slight twist. Thinking for sure that I had pulled some bonehead mistake I re-leveled the fuselage about twelve times. Nope. Borrowed other levels. Nope. Borrowed a laser level. Nope. As long as the wing spar box was level there was a slight twist in the aft fuselage. The red level on the horizontal is kind of hard to see but it is reading the same thing as the yellow one. The wing spar box is dead level.
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Got a bunch other builders to come by and confirm that I hadn't made some mistake. Talked with tech support and decided a tapered shim would be a reasonable solution. Drew up what I wanted and sent it to a friend with a CNC mill. Three days later they arrived.
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During the email traffic with Van's, Gus noted that I was fitting the horizontal without the turtle deck skin on. He suggested installing the skin again as that might take out the twist. Sure enough. It didn't get all the twist out but it went from needing over .110" of shim to about .030". Made a new shim with the new taper and correct average thickness to get the right angle of incidence and all was well.
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Next fun was the vertical. Getting the vertical, well vertical, and perpendicular to the horizontal was also a thrill. Much less effort than the horizontal though.
Dropped a weighted string through the rudder attach points and got them lined up and everything measuring up nicely per plans. Nearly ready for drilling the aft spar.
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Once the rear spar was all drilled and bolted it was up to the vertical front spar. The instructions said to cut off 9/16" off the bottom of the spar. I have grown to mistrust these kinds of instructions so I drew the cut line first then removed a little off the bottom of the spar so I could get the vertical properly positioned fore and aft. Once I had everything set I match drilled forward spar to the plate. As you can see, had I cut the spar per the instructions first I would have shot myself in the foot.
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I notice the picture makes some of those holes look out of round. Trick of the light or something. On all the mounting holes for the tail group I drilled all the holes undersize and reamed to final size so they are all nicely round.

After fussing and adjusting ten thousand times I got the all the control surfaces hung. There is no binding and they move friction free.
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Got the elevator travel set and the stops modified so both arms contact together.
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After I installed the cockpit elevator and rudder controls and got them all adjusted so everything runs friction free I decided now was as good a time as any to do one of the fastback conversion chores. Removal of the cockpit top rails. They get replaced by new units from Showplanes.
Reliving warbird deconstruction days here drilling a ton of rivets. Drill the head, pop it off with a punch then drive the rest of the rivet out with a spring punch and a bucking bar held on the back. Easy and no chance of drilling a hole oval that way.
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One side off.
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The new top rails are about 5/8" narrower (more shoulder room) so the center section bulkheads got modified. Essentially, cut along the blue line.
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Center section bulkheads modified and two new top rails in place. There are other steps regarding the forward fuselage skin that need to happen before final assembly of the top rails.
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Quick update with a couple picture worthy things.
I went with the Andair fuel valve and the EFII boost pump. I am trying very hard to keep the fuel filter aft of the gear tower where it will be much simpler to maintain. The thought of laying on my side up under the instrument panel with my head resting on the rudder pedals while trying to remove and replace a fuel filter just doesn't sound like fun. To that end I pushed the fuel valve forward in that bay with the hope I can get the filter aft of it. That way I can gain access from above and work on it while sitting in the seat or leaning over the side.
Hopefully......
I have gorilla arms so moving the valve forward was not an issue for me.
I got the feed lines from the tanks made up and installed. I am starting to think I might actually get away with getting the filter aft of the valve. I have been playing with it in a few places and I think up high and inboard will give me ease of maintenance plus allow relatively easy installation of the wing bolts.
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Today I worked on getting the fuel pump mount made. I was not in love with mounting the pump to the floor. Since my fuselage is QB I don't have access to the underside of the cockpit false floor in that area. That would mean rivnuts. The problem with rivnuts is they always eventually spin. Even the keyed or serrated kind. I was also not a fan of how close the pump, the fuel lines and the electrical connections would be to my huge feet. I shamelessly stole a mounting plan from builder Greg Blanck. Essentially you take two pieces of angle and sandwich the cockpit aux longeron. That provides a base to attach the pump mounting plate to and them you mount the pump to the plate.
Here I have the two angles sandwiching the longeron.
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The two angles are not wide enough for the pump to mount to so you mount the pump plate to the angles.
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Then just mount the pump to the plate.
Obviously in this pic the pump is just hanging on a couple clecos and not in the correct location but you get the idea.
Everything on this mod will be done with plate nuts and I plan on using cap screws. I find them much easier to deal with in blind or cramped working conditions than phillips head or even bolts.
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Busy at work so probably not much progress in the next couple weeks.
 
Sam, do you have any other dedicated build blogs or websites. I just subscribed to this thread, but I'd also like to add you to my list of followed building websites if you have one.
 
Sorry Martin, This is a close to computer tech as I get.
I have lots more pictures and will happily answer questions but I don't have additional logs anywhere. My build log is literally a hand written spiral binder.
 
I was doing some work on the fuselage today and was searching for an answer to a question I had. Of course I did find it on VAF and that got me to thinking I haven't done any sort of an update in a while. Nothing earth shattering to report. Just clicking off things in the build while working to feed my hobby.

This is how I mounted my potentiometer for flap position. The link is large scale RC car parts that everybody recommended. I made the bracket and everything can be removed with a couple screws that go in to plate nuts.
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I did SB 16-12-16. When I got my kit I started at the beginning of the build manual and checked on each step. I did notice these 12 bolts were not installed but I made a highlighted note to wait and see if there was anything else that was supposed to be attached with these bolts. I also went forward in the manual at the wing install and left another highlighted note to confirm the 12 bolts were installed. Since I have a canoe this was a pretty simple chore. Fabbed up a simple tool to get the job done.
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Next was brake lines. I am running Grove airfoil gear so this is how I plumbed it. I have seen a couple other ways too. When the line is tight it does not touch anything and it does not move.
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Here is the cockpit portion of the brakes. I put the brake fluid reservoir in the baggage compartment. The single line comes down to a splitter where it meets the flex lines take it to the feed side of the masters. The twin hard lines are the pressure lines coming out of the parking brake valve and traveling down the gear towers to connect to the gear.
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Next up was fuel vent. I just couldn't bring myself to do it the stock way. Went with the JDAir machined vents. Nice pieces of equipment. The problem on the 8 is the floor is not the bottom of the airplane and I didn't want to run Rocket coils in the wing roots. Because of the shape of the grove gear leg in the pocket it wouldn't work to use the stock hole so I asked Van's if they had any issues with me drilling a second hole in the floor and moving the fuel vent inboard about 1.5 inches. They saw no issues so I pressed on.
Here is the vent mounted on the custom made gear pocket close out plate.
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The main issue was, if I used the stock fuel vent hole location the teardrop vent would cover up the middle screw of the close out plate. The size/shape of the Grove gear leg limits where you can mount the teardrop vent as well.
The view from below.
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Here is the side view in the gear pocket with the gear removed. I put a -4 rivet in the plate to prevent the vent from rotating. I notice in the picture it looks like my little doubler is raised way up. It is not in real life. Obviously for the final installation there will be rubber grommets etc but you get the idea. I don't have picture from inside the gear tower but essentially I have the AN fitting that comes through the side of the fuselage from the tank. Connected to that is a short (approx 10") piece of flexible braided stainless line I had Tom at TS Flightlines make for me. The flexible line travels up and connects to a hard line that from there is essentially a stock system but with a more attractive termination out the bottom of the aircraft. The short flexible section allows me to unscrew the gear pocket close out plate and pull the whole assembly down a little. I can then get wrenches on the vent fitting and disconnect it from the vent line. From there I can just pull the entire vent line out of the gear tower except it is a bit easier than stock because I have that short section of flexible line.
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I have just about finished everything I need to do construction wise in the tail cone. A friend came by and helped me rivet in the autopilot pitch servo mount. Thank goodness I put a couple layers of cardboard down to protect the skin because between the two of us I bet we dropped the bars about 100 times each.
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While I am waiting for my magnetometer mount I put the turtleneck skin on again and did some final fitting. The next time I pull it off it will be time to dimple etc to be ready for riveting. I also put the forward skin on. This gets modified for the fastback conversion so I need to start figuring out how that all works.
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One of today's chores was to cut in the second fresh air intake. My smoke tank just got much smaller but I want the extra airflow. Laying out the four corners for the template and this is the real heart in the throat moment when you are about to attack you essentially completed fuselage with a drill and cutoff wheel.
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No turning back now.
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Finished product. The template matches this side and the factory pre-punch side identically. I held the plastic vent up and everything seemed to line up very nicely. I am happy with how it turned out.
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