| day |
notes |
hours |
| 1 |
Order AN4-32A bolt from LAS Aerospace, plus some fuel system fittings and turnbuckle adjuster tools. Remove top bump-stop from containment bulkhead. Apply a bead of silicone sealer to the lower face of the plywood piece and smooth with a wet finger. Clean hands well with Swarfega to minimise chance of contamination of any bonding areas with silicone. Start to remove all temporary nuts on the containment bulkhead and replace them with stiffnuts. Put a dab of inspectors lacquer on each stiffnut when fitted and photograph them as confirmation. |
1777.1 |
| 2 |
Finish fitting stiffnuts on containment bulkhead (except on the bottom bump-stop bolt). Apply inspectors lacquer to each and photograph them. Total 4 on the base, 2 on the pushrod restraint, 6 on the rubbing strips and 2 on the upper bump stop/flash moulding. Tighten the checknut on TP18B against TP18C tailplane mass balance arm adjuster, apply inspectors lacquer & photograph. Do some more work on the CADintosh fuel system drawing and realise I haven't yet figured out how the vent tubing to atmosphere from the fuel level sensor will be terminated. As it's 1/8" bore there isn't an AN fitting to suit it. Will need a custom fitting, an adaptor to allow use of a standard fitting, or an unequal tee-piece to combine it with the sight-gauge breather tubing. Re-connect trim servo cable to switch, indicator, governor and battery. Apply a smear of general-purpose grease to the exposed friction surfaces. Drive trim to opposite end of travel and grease exposed faces at other end. Motor trim through full range a few times to spread grease. Wipe off excess grease. Tighten M10 Nyloc nut on damper spring to expose about 1 and a half threads. Re-check servo transit time - now about 27 sec compared to about 26 sec at the lower spring pressure. Disconnect trim cable again. Fit the stiffnuts to the bolts connecting TP18 assembly to TP9, and to the trim bellcrank pivot bolt. Apply inspectors lacquer and take pictures. With Dorothy's help, lift the fuselage upper moulding out onto the drive. Roll out the fuselage lower half. Remove pitch pushrod restraint plate. Remove aft rod-end from bellcrank and unscrew it from the pushrod, which takes about 16 turns. Unscrew the pushrod from the forward rod-end, which takes about 14 turns. Thread is 5/16" x 24TPI, so 16 turns is 0.6667" or 16.933mm; 14 turns is 0.5833" or 14.817mm. The manual calls for 15 - 17mm (0.6" - 0.7") thread engagement which equates to 14.2 (14.4) turns to 16.1 (16.8) turns. 15 turns would be a good mid-point to aim for. Check the position of the checknut and screw the pushrod into the forward rod-end 15 turns. Screw the aft rod-end onto the pushrod 15 turns, plus a quarter turn to align with the bellcrank. Tighten the checknut against the rod-end. Re-fit the rod-end to the bellcrank with all the washers in the correct order. Tighten the checknut at the forward end, keeping the rod-ends aligned. Fit the MS21042-5 stiffnut to the bolt securing the aft rod-end to the bellcrank. Re-fit stiffnuts to pitch restraint plate bolts. |
1781.1 |
| 3 |
AN4-32A bolt etc delivered from LAS Aerospace. |
|
| 5 |
Remove AN4-31A bolt from lower bump stop while supporting weights clear of it. Replace with the AN4-32A and check that it will not be threadbound. Fit stiffnut and apply a dab of inspectors lacquer. Start to make a plywood jig to hold the digital level in a reference position on the flat area of the cockpit module in between the headrests. |
1782.3 |
| 9 |
Cut off the outer ends of the plywood that go out to the fuselage sides as those locations will be affected by cables and conduits etc, and the headrests will provide enough lateral location anyway. Round the edges and re-profile to fit the headrests better, which allows the forward end to overhang the backrest a bit. Measure the backrest angle with the protractor stock on the engineers square. Find a suitable length of wood and bandsaw it to the angle required. Position it against the plywood clamp them together. Drill through and fit woodscrews. Find a piece of aluminium section from the old double-glazing that's suitable for providing location at the aft edge. Trim some excess off it and find the offcut is suitable for making location angles for the digital level. Mark and drill aluminium pieces 5mm for 4.8mm rivets. Mark through onto plywood, drill 5mm and counterbore underside 12mm for rivet heads. Fit and set rivets. Check the fit - nice and firm. |
1785.3 |
| 10 |
Continue editing and extending CADintosh fuel system diagram. |
|
| 12 |
Continue working on CADintosh fuel system diagram. |
|
| 13 |
Mark centre lines on the jig for the digital level and on the firewall with a felt-tip pen, measuring from the fuselage sides. Extend the firewall mark to the top by erecting a perpendicular to the transverse line. Check for line-up of marks from aft through the holes on the rear bulkhead and the TS05 restraint - looks very satisfactory. |
1785.5 |
| 14 |
Turnbuckle adjuster tools delivered from LAS Aerospace. |
|
| 24 |
Continue work on fuel system diagram, finding several further items to be ordered. |
|
| 26 |
Move fuselage top moulding outside. Measure with steel tape from the tips of the tailplane torque tube to the forward edge of the aft piece of aluminium (1255mm aft of firewall) at the centreline of the levelling jig. Starboard 2380mm, port 2385mm. Measure also from torque tube tips to centreline at top of firewall. Starboard 3615mm, port 3620mm. Set aluminium angle and small layup board across fuselage sides to provide platforms for the digital level. Compare the levels on the jig between the headrests with those on the cross supports, and take photos for record. Thwartwise on aluminium angle, 0.2 degree port down; on jig, 0.1 degree port up. On tailplane torque tube (both sides reading the same) 0.2 degree port down. Fore-and-aft on board, 0.1 degree nose-down; on jig, 0.2 degree nose-down. Remove locking pins from starboard turnbuckle and attach chain tool to keep eyes in alignment. Find a large split-pin to keep turnbuckle wrench in closed position and unscrew turnbuckle 9 turns, which just starts to reveal the thread at the aft end. One more turn reveals the thread at the forward end. Re-tighten from that point 5 turns (to give the max 4 threads in for initial installation specified in AC43.13-1B para 7-166). Replace the locking pins, but not fully home. On the port turnbuckle, one of the locking pins has somehow got fully set so have to destroy it to remove it. Apply the chain tool and unscrew the turnbuckle. Results same as for starboard; re-tighten to same extent. Temporarily insert the used locking pin until I can order some more. Draw up the dimensions measured on the torque tube in CADintosh. The arcs intersect 1043.3mm apart, compared with the torque tube actual length of 940mm, but given the very shallow angle of intersection small errors in that direction are to be expected. A line struck between those intersections is 0.27 degrees away (starboard-forward, port-aft) from a true orthogonal to the fuselage centreline. I'm inclined to think that a quarter of a degree or so is not going to be a significant problem, compared with the work involved in trying to reduce that error. Measure the distance along the centreline from the datum on the levelling jig to the front face of the tailplane torque tube as 2340mm. Add that to the drawing, but it doesn't help much. After further work on the fuel system diagram, draw up a candidate adaptor to connect the sight gauge, fuel weight sensor vent, and vent to atmosphere to the top of the filler neck. It would have 3 off 1/8" NPT ports and a male stub for 6mm ID tubing, similar to the tee-piece at the bottom of the sight gauge tubing for the fuel weight sensor. |
1787.3 |
| 27 |
Looking through fuel system stuff in box 5, find there are some parts I'd forgotten about - 3 off 1/8" NPT to 1/8" barb adaptors, Europa part number 18230-1. They are not called out in the manual, but possibly they were for pitot/static connexions. There's also a male nylon tee-piece 795-405 that is not called out. As I've got nylon adaptors already from LAS Aerospace for the instruments, the brass ones will be fine and definitely fuel-proof. Check the size and they are a good fit into the tubing from the weight sensor. Order from Europa Aircraft a spare FPA903/B (1/8" NPT to 6mm barb union - which is now numbered HFSB6-2N) for the sight tube connexion to the vent adaptor, and a couple of spare CLIP3 for the aluminium filler pipe. Start to cut out the top end of the F18 fuel filler moulding to see how the fuel cap assembly will fit into it, with a view to finding out how much space inside there will be for the vent pipe connexions. Looks as though the cap assembly will be quite a tight fit in the extended, smaller-diameter section - but it also looks as though that will need to be cut back so that it doesn't protrude through the fuselage side. Also consider whether it might be possible to connect to the top of F18 with NPT fittings rather than bulkhead fittings, but discard that idea as it would mean the fittings would have to be fitted before F18 was fitted to the fuselage, and they would be impossible to rotate for removal (eg for service) after F18 was fitted to the fuselage. Considering again the layout, the most attractive option now seems to be a 3-way adaptor with an angled connector for the sight gauge breather, and straight connexions for the fuel weight sensor and the vent to atmosphere. |
1787.6 |
| 28 |
Look through the aluminium material drawer and find a 1" cylindrical bar offcut of a length suitable for the vent adaptor. |
|
| 29 |
CLIP3 & (now-redundant) HFSB6-2N delivered from Europa Aircraft. Finish (I think!) updating fuel system parts database & CADintosh drawing to take account of latest ideas on filler vent connexions. |
|
| 30 |
Start to do some cross-checking of fuel system printouts. |
|
go to previous page of journal 
go to list of narrative pages
