An place for all those drawings   June 30th, 2010

I was running out of room for both the drawings and work-pieces on the table.  I had some MDF, 2×4’s, and some left-over boards from the fuselage kit shipping crate.  So, I made an easel…

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Assembling the Firewall Angles   June 29th, 2010

Here is the firewall with all of its angles, bits and pieces clecoed together.  Note that I also have the thick angle brackets clamped in place, as I was about to match-drill them to the firewall along with the rest of the angles.

Once I had everything clecoed together, I noticed the two angles that have a pre-formed bend (F-601-N) did not fit very good.  Apparently this is a common issue with these parts — the type of bend applied doesn’t really go with the shape of the angle…

The two recommended solutions are to either add shims, or try to ‘fix’  the bend.  I didn’t really like the shim approach, since is would require more of a wedge-shaped shim.  So, I decided to try to fix the bend.  I used my 2X rivet gun with a mushroom set with the angle clamped as shown below.  When I was done, the gap was practially gone.  The angle looked a bit scuffed, but I went over it a few times with a maroon scotch-brite pad, and it looked like new.

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Pitot Tube Plumbing   June 28th, 2010

The pitot tube comes with very long aluminum tubing.  You can’t really bend it and be able to take it in and out of the mount.  So, I cut it down to a more reasonable length, added some clear platic hose (from Home Depot) to protect against the two tubes rubbing against each other, and installed the required connectors to go from aluminum tubing to the clear plastic tubing provided by Safeair (http://www.safeair1.com)

With the pitot inside the mount, I tried to route the two plastic hoses from the grommet in the rib to the pitot.  The problem is that these hoses have a minimum turning radius of 2″, so there was no way I was getting the tube to do what I wanted without putting kinks in it.

I figured I could use two 90″ connectors on each line (only one of them is shown below).  These are over $5 if you buy them at the usual aviation places.  However, if you go to AutomationDirect and search for Union Elbow under Pneumatic Components, you can find them for $5.50 for a 5-pack :-).  I bet they also have the plastic tubing for them at a much lower price.

Once the tubing is pushed fully into the fittings, they will look a lot more straight than they do below.

Finally, this is what it will look like from the outside…

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Pitot Tube Screws   June 16th, 2010

Before mounting the pitot mast to the wing, we need to drill and tap four holes for screws that hold the pitot tube to the pitot mast.  Drilling the holes was a bit tricky, since the pitot mast is a curved surface.  I used a leather glove to sort of hold the pitot mast in place, and did my best to drill a hole perpendicular to the pitot mast.  Dynon recoments using 6-32 screws, so I drilled the holes with a #36 bit.

I then match-drilled the pitot tube through the mast, and used a 6-32 tap to cut the screw threads on all four holes.

I was not sure which kind of 6-32 screw to use, so I ordered three different kinds from Aircraft Spruce (They are something like $0.05 each, so I figured it was worth the investment…)  The one on the right was the ‘safe’ choice, but it kind of looks like crap.  I ended up using countersunk screws like the one shown on the left.  I was not sure if the mast would be thick enough to countersink, but I decided to try it out anyway.  The hole did end up slightly enlarged, but there is plenty of material in the pitot tube for the screw to grab on and hold on to the pitot mast.

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