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Category: Quickheads BLOG
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Published: Wednesday, 01 July 2009 01:00
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Written by Dan Yager
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Hits: 2408
Well I still haven't received my video camera back from the repair facility. However, I did get an e-mail from them saying that it was fixed and that it should be arriving via UPS today. So it seems like I should have the videos back up and running shortly. (Keep your fingers crossed.) 
In an effort to hold you over until then I have included some pictures below that show some of the progress I've made. Just so you don't think I've been goofing off. You can click the image to enlarge it, and navigate through them using the NEXT and PREV buttons. (A description of my "handywork" is directly below.)
{gallery}ConstructionLog/FuelFiller{/gallery}
The first picture shows the back of the fuel filler nozzle after I removed the foam in that area. As you can see I had quite a bit of foam to replace. In the second picture, I had a piece cut out to the perfect shape, slathered on the wet micro, and attempted to press it up into place. Well. . . let's just say that I REALLY hate working with LAST-A foam. After several attempts to fit the perfect piece, and after several cracked pieces, I simply decided to take a cracked piece and shove it up in there!
I held everything in place with a combination of insulating foam, duct tape, and plastic. The result is what you find in the Third and Fourth pictures. As you can see, there was a significant crack, but that filled in nicely with the wet micro. I intend to cut the fuel filler door out of this area again, so I don't suspect that any of this will be a problem. By the way, in the Third picture you can see the result of placing a sheet of plastic over the wet micro and allowing it to dry without smoothing and removing the voids. I had to sand and scrape this area back down to the foam before filling the area with dry-micro.
The remaining pictures show, my "dry-micro" work on the outside of the fuel filler door and the top of the header tank. I wanted to lessen the "lip" around all of the edges to allow the final fiberglass structure to have the highest strength. Once I sand everything smooth. I intend to cover the entire area with two layers of BID on a 45 degree bias, and then use the taping schedule called out for in the plans to re-attach the firewall.
By the way, there has been an excellent discussion on the Q-list about how to properly perform Weight and Balance calculations on any hand crafted airplaine. I intend to do a full write-up on this, so that others can use it, and (selfishly) to help me better understand how to perform the calculations under varying circumstances when I get to that point in the repairs.
As always, I invite your feedback in the comments below, or in the forum here on this site.
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Category: Quickheads BLOG
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Published: Tuesday, 20 May 2008 01:00
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Written by Dan Yager
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Hits: 1938
{wmv}VOR_Antenna_Installation{/wmv}
Here they made a mistake installing the VOR antenna. The VOR antenna is two short strips of copper foil applied in a "V" to the bottom of the Main Wing before glassing. Apparently you're supposed to leave a half inch between the strips at the center, but they joined the two pieses together.
I'm sure this wasn't fun to attempt to correct after the wing was fully glassed, but it sounds like they did it somehow. 
