| day |
notes |
hours |
| 1 |
Order some M5 stainless half-nuts and 1/4"-20 UNC dome nuts (to see if they'll fit the camera mount stud) from Westfield Fasteners. |
|
| 2 |
Bracket layup and sample well cured. Take it all down to the garage. Remove clamps and steel angles. Remove polyethylene sheet and peel-ply. Trim the layup along its length to the edge of the clamped area and cut off the ragged ends. Smooth & straighten edges with Perma-Grit block. Check what size the brackets need to be; small enough to fit in the available space, and big enough to hold an anchor nut. About 33mm seems OK. Cut off 3 off 33mm lengths from the layup. Smooth edges and round corners. Position cover over fuel filler and with felt-tip pen, mark fuselage around edges of cover where brackets will go. |
3563.1 |
| 3 |
M5 half-nuts & UNC dome nuts delivered from Westfield Fasteners. The dome nut fits perfectly on the camera mount stud. |
|
| 10 |
Open the hole in the starboard door lug to 4.2mm and tap M5. Apply Loctite 243 to the ball fitting and screw it to the lug. Tighten firmly with 8mm AF spanner. Apply Loctite to the exposed end of the screw, fit one of the newly-acquired M5 half-nuts and tighten it. Wipe off excess Loctite.
Fit the cylinder end of the gas strut to the ball and with the edge of the door supported about 1m above the sill (the piece of aluminium tube I was using is just about right), check where the bottom end of the strut will fall on the forward side of the recess and mark with felt-tip pen. Drill the flange 2.4mm then 4.2mm and tap M5. At this point realise that the hole should be in the aft side of the recess, not the forward side! Mark the aft face of the recess for the lower ball fitting, checking that the AN970-3 washer will be clear of the corners. Drill 3mm (need to use a long bit to reach) then 4.2mm and tap. Care taken to ensure none of the cutting tools touch any of the fuel plumbing inside, just aft of the flange. Find a suitable M5 screw to hold the washer in place while the epoxy cures. |
3564.0 |
| 12 |
After my flight medical at EGBJ, call in at the operations desk and enquire about the possibility of parking my Europa trailer airside for security, in the hope that might be cheaper than hangar space. They advise contacting the fire crew by e-mail, so when I get home, send an e-mail with details of my request for parking space. |
|
| 13 |
Reply received from EGBJ fire service saying that they have found what they think would be a suitable space and inviting me to come and look at it. As this month is quite busy, let them know I'll be in touch again in September. |
|
| 14 |
Thinking again about the lower ball fitting, there seems no need to use a temporary screw to retain the washer; I can just epoxy the nut onto the ball fitting (which seems a good idea as the nut would otherwise not be secured - the manual does not even call out Loctite at this end).
Mix a batch of Evo-Stik Control 2-hour epoxy and apply to the tapped hole, and to the threads of the ball fitting. Screw in the ball fitting and snug it up with a ring spanner (8mm AF). Wipe off excess epoxy. Apply epoxy to AN970-3 washer and place over the end of the screw. Apply epoxy to M5 half-nut and fit it to the screw. Tighten up with ratchet driver. Wipe off excess epoxy on inside.
Fit gas spring and check action. Seems mostly OK, but the spring distorts the door frame and the bottom edge has to be pushed forwards for the shoot bolt tubes to clear each other when closing. Will have to correct for that by putting in a slight opposite twist when fitting glazing. Also, the position of the lower ball fitting is just a tiny bit too high, causing the door frame to contact it at closing and leaving the door frame about 1mm proud. Relieve the plastic end fitting of the gas spring slightly with the millennicut file and now the door closes flush as before. Leave gas spring off so that the door does not become distorted.
Mix a small amount of flox with the remainder of the epoxy and use it to fill the hole made in error in the forward flange of the channel. |
3565.4 |
| 19 |
Consider how best to fit the CO monitor to the face of the F14 Instrument Module against the firewall on the starboard side. Decide that M3 screws could be bonded into small pieces of aluminium which in turn could be bonded to the IM face. The aluminium pieces would need to be long enough to support the bottom edge of the monitor. Cut off a couple of pieces of the old retract lever (5mm thick). Find a couple of button-head M3 screws of a suitable length. Tidy the end mills and slot drills into a compartment box. Clamping the aluminium pieces together, mill them square on the 3 cut edges to about 40mm x 13 mm. (The 10x20x40 block is perfect for setting them vertical to mill the ends.) Clamp on top of each other with card softener on the vise jaw and drill 2.5mm near one end for tapping M3. Start to cut a lightening slot over most of the rest of the length, using a 8mm slot drill. |
3567.1 |
| 20 |
Continue with milling the 8mm slot in the aluminium workpieces. However, towards one end of the cut it gets very noisy and laboured for no obvious reason. Also, (distracted I think by the noise) I have nearly cut right through the bottom end of the workpieces. There will still be enough meat to provide the required support, but it's not as tidy as I would have wished.
Pause for thought, and order new slot drills in several sizes from Arc Euro Trade. |
3567.3 |
| 24 |
Slot drills delivered from Arc Euro Trade. |
|
| 31 |
Fit a 6mm slot drill in place of the 8mm one, tighten the holder in the quill, and mill the slot right through to the bottom. Still a bit noisy, but not as bad as before. |
3567.8 |
go to list of milestones
go to previous page of journal 
go to list of narrative pages
