Nose cone Installation - 12 hours (386 Total)

Today was another long day. My goal is to get the enclosure finished so I get take the plane to the painter's place on Monday (tomorrow).

Today I focused on the nose cone. The first step was to correctly position the nose cone. The nose cone needs to be inline with the longerons and be 55 1/8 inches from the keel tube. This was simple enough to set but required grinding away some of the nose cone to allow it to fit around some of the weld joints in the frame.

Once the position was set, I drilled and cleco'd the metal strips that hold the bottom of the nose cone and the forward most belly pan to the steel frame.













The way the longeron rails, forward most belly pan, and the metal strip around the nose cone meet was difficult to determine. Once this was determined I drilled and cleco'd through the three to hold the nose cone in place. Below is a photo of what I ended up with.


























Now that the nose cone placement is set, I need to cut out my blow out panel for my parachute. I used my Dremel tool to cut out the panel once I was satisfied with my cut out outline placed with masking tape.













Once the panel was cut out, I then trimmed off 3/16 of an inch off on all four sides. This will allow room from the center portion of the H-channel rubber trim I bought.













It was a little bit of a wrestling match to get the blow out panel back in place with the trim but it does have a good tight fit. The channels of the rubber trim are a little larger than I had hoped for. The Lexan material of the nose cone doesn't fill the channel completely but it should work. I may try to glue the channel to the top surface of the nose cone and the blow out panel.

























Now for the nose wheel... Again I used my Dremel to grind a hole in the bottom of the nose cone for the nose wheel. I oversized the hole to allow a 1/8 inch gap between the nose wheel fork and the Lexan.





































My next task was to install my pitot tube. I started out by predrilling a hole through the pitot tube mounting block. I drilled this hole one size smaller that the 1/4" pitot tube. I them contoured the block to fit well with the inside of the nose cone. I then screwed the block in place and drilled the 1/4" hole through block and nose cone. I then removed the block and attempted to install the pitot tube into the block. The hole was too tight and I ended up damaging the pitot tube. Luckily, I had another tube I could use. I partially drilled out the block with a slightly larger drill bit. This allowed me to install the pitot tube and still have a enough retention force.

















































I then drilled out a 5/8" hole in the two inch flange on the top half of the nose cone. I placed a rubber grommet into the hole and threaded my pitot tube through it. This will hold my pitot tube nicely. My first attempt in drilling the grommet hole ended up being too large so I ended up having to drill a second hole.














Just prior to permanently installing my nose cone, I cleaned out the grease for the nose wheel fork and replaced it with some clean grease. I then installed and riveted the nose cone into place. I then installed the nose wheel fork and bolted it into place. This was easier than I had expected. I was able to work around the battery, rocket, and parachute easily from the left side. It will be a different story once I get the windshield installed.

(More) Belly Pan Installation - 12 hours (374 Total)

Today was a long day but I was able to get the rest of the belly pans installed.

The first thing I did was start installing the landing gear cuffs. These are used to cover the large hole between the two rear most belly pans. There isn't much to go by in terms of how to position these so I made the top edge of the cuffs parallel with the seam of the rear most panel. Below are a couple pictures of the cuffs.
























The picture below shows an enlarged rivet hole. Not liking the look of how the belly pans were riveting together, I drilled out a couple of rivets to replace. Unfortunately, the hole in the sheet metal enlarged to the point that I was having trouble with the rivets. To alleviate this I purchased and used some slightly larger rivets.
























Here are some other pictures of cuffs in various stages of the install.





































Next came the front two belly pans. The pan that fits below the seat is actually two pans, a left and a right. These three pans are attached to the frame by rails that fit over the longerons of the steel frame. The pans are then riveted to the rails.













All but one of the rails needed to be modified to allow it to fit around welded points on the frame.













Below are some pictures of the front two belly pans and their accompanying rails. I permanently riveted the rails on the right side of the plane but only used some #40 temporary rivets to hold the rails on the left side. These will be permanently riveted when the windshield is installed.





































The belly pans are held in place to the bottom of the plane with the metal pieces pictured below. They fit over the horizontal members of the steel frame and are riveted to the belly pans at the belly pan seems. Prior to riveting these in place I deformed them slightly so they grip the frame and sheet metal tightly.




























































The piece below needed to be trimmed to fit around the weld that holds the flap lever bracket in place.

























Prior to fully installing the belly pans, I tightened the straps on the seat bottom. This is my last, easy opportunity to tighten these straps.

Belly Pan Installation - 5 hours (362 Total)

Today I installed the two rear most belly pans. This took an incredibly long amount of time to get the placement just right. Once I started riveting the two pieces together, I used a set of reversible clamps to hold the sheet metal in place.

Belly Pan Fabric Gluing (Again) and Trimming- 5 hours (357 Total)

Today I planned to trim the fabric to size. Unfortunately, the S-18 glue that I used didn't adhere the fabric to the metal skin. The fabric, on all of the pieces, easily pulled right off the metal leaving a residue of glue on both the fabric and the metal. The glue had setup and wasn't tacky. It appears as if I had let it set for too long prior to pressing the fabric to the metal.

It looks like the two large bottles of glue I had used was faulty. On one of the pieces I needed to add glue to a fabric edge because I didn't spread it out enough. I used the small bottle of glue that I had originally bought and used because it was handy. The glue in this spot had held strong showing that the small bottle of glue worked fine.

Needing to start over again, I went and purchased a can of Contact Cement from the hardware store. This glue worked very well and set up faster than the original bottle of S-18 glue. Once I had finished re gluing all of the parts, the glue had set up enough that I could start trimming the fabric.















Below are some pictures of the trimmed fabric. I used scissors, a utility knife, and a soldering iron to trim the fabric. In the areas that I had placed masking tape over the metal to allow me to trim the fabric back, I ended up peeling the fabric off the tape instead of peeling the fabric and tape away from the metal. The tape didn't work as well as I had hoped and I ended up with some rough cuts on the fabric. In some places I ended up cutting too much fabric away from the metal's edge. It may have been easier if I had forgone the tape, glued and trimmed the fabric right to the edge of the metal, and then sliced the fabric with the utility knife where I wanted it trimmed and then peeled that fabric away. This would have left a glue residue on the edge but the glue is not thick enough to worry about.

Belly Pan Fabric Gluing - 2 hour (352 Total)

Today I glued my fabric to the belly pans. I used a heavy duty role on glue called S-18. This product worked very well on my canvas type fabric. This glue would not work very well on a felt type fabric because the fabric would absorb too much of it off the roller. I found this to be the case when I tried to apply the glue to the sound proofing material that goes on the side panels.

A spray on adhesive worked well for the sound proofing fabric. I masked off the outside edges of the sheet metal and sound proofing fabric to counter any over-spray. I removed the masking immediately after spraying on the adhesive.

Below you can see some photos of my setup and results.