Europa #435 G-RODO Build Journal - 2022 08

index

sitemap

advanced

search engine by freefind

go to list of milestones

Navigation & Acknowledgements

day	notes	hours
1	Tidy up tools, bushes etc that have accumulated in the starboard seatwell.
2	Take the 4 polyethylene bags containing the flap and outrigger hardware out to the trailer. Fit the anti-servo tabs to both tailplanes, greasing the stiffnuts to prevent premature wear and galling. Note that there is slight friction at extremes of tab travel - will need to relieve some paint high spots. Close up trailer.	3643.8
3	Refer to photos of flap hinge arrangements for relative positioning of hinge plates (FL1, FL2) and hangers (W19, W20). Fit (after false start with wrong arrangement) port inboard flap hanger with stiffnuts, greasing as usual. Fit port mid flap hanger with stiffnuts. Fit port flap to hangers, starting with mid hinge, then inboard hinge. Assemble OR6 and OR7 stack between the W21 flap hangers. Assemble (with some difficulty because of dropping parts) the outboard flap hinge pivot bolt with sleeve, spacers and spring, through the W21s and the outboard flap hinge FL3. Swing whole assembly into position between the W18s. Start to insert bolts to secure the W21s to the W18 mounts, but 4th one refuses to line up and go through. Puzzled as to why there are only 4 bolts of this length in the hardware bag - a check of earlier photos confirms that I used all 6 when previously assembling the outriggers. I also note that my reference to the sections in figures 14 and 26 in the builders manual chapter 9M showing the bolt heads on the flap hanger side, with the washer and nut on the W18 side of the assembly, was not appropriate for the outrigger assembly - they are the other way around in the photos (eg DSCN1260.JPG). A more careful look at page Page 9M - 24 also confirms this, with the bolts shown entering the assembly from the outside faces (ie the W18 side). Will have to reverse the bolts. As a further result of digging around in the archives, will also have to check whether the bolts in the hardware bag are AN3-5A (as called out in the manual) or the AN3-4A that I felt were less likely to become threadbound (see journal 2008-02-26). Leave the tools that are in use for this work inside the trailer for now and close up.	3646.4
4	Remove (with help from a 4mm pin punch) the 4 bolts from the W21/W18 assembly on the port wing. Check size - they are AN3-4A. Re-insert them from the outside faces of the W18 plates. Position a washer with tweezers and fit a greased stiffnut to each bolt in turn, holding the nut in a ring spanner to position it. The last pair of bolts (forward end of assembly) are not quite in safety when the nuts are tightened so remove the AN3-4A and replace with AN3-5A. No obvious reason for the length difference but hey-ho. Fit OR4 to OR1 and slightly open the split pin on the castle nut to prevent it slipping out, but allowing for removal should that prove necessary. Fit OR5 to OR4 with greased stiffnut. Grease the mating surfaces of OR4 and OR7B. Attach spring OR12 to OR5. Fit OR1 between the W21s. The AN970 washers on the outside of the W21s are part of the Outrigger Mod 10661 and do not appear in the build manual, so check the details in the mod documents. I had not been aware that the Outrigger Mod 10661 as I performed it according to Issue 2, January 2003 had been updated later. The update is (somewhat confusingly) called Version 2 and is dated May 2007. It is considerably different and calls for a larger size of pivot bolt and a means of preventing its head from rotating to avoid loosening of the fastening. The original version of the mod I implemented calls for a stiffnut on the pivot bolt, but apparently that was later found to work loose in service. However, I find that the castle nut as originally called out in the build manual can be tightened the right amount to secure the outrigger without either slop or excessive friction, and that it will accept a split pin, so stick with that arrangement. It would be possible to add an anti-rotation fork later if that is found to be appropriate. Attach spring OR11 to OR4. Attach spring OR12 to FL3 and OR5. Action seems all OK, although with the wing LE-down and no control actuator constraining the flap, it does not stay in the fully-deflected position so as to lock the outrigger. That will not be an issue once the wing is rigged to the fuselage.	3649.3
5	Open the trailer and move the tailplanes away from the starboard wing for better access. Slide the wing dolly outboard a bit to clear the aileron fixing holes. Offer up the starboard aileron with the EURO01 washer fitted to the actuating bolt and am pleased to find that I can just slip the rod-end fitting of the pushrod onto the bolt while the aileron is held with the inboard end as high as possible. Fit outer washer and greased stiffnut. Tighten jam nut against the rod-end fitting. Find I can hold the inboard hinge in place against the wing flange while inserting the first screw. On the outboard hinge, use the hook tool to hold the hinge against the wing flange while inserting the first screw. Fit and tighten the remaining screws. Some are very stiff to get fully home - maybe anchor nuts full of paint? Checking orientation for W19 on starboard wing, notice that I have fitted the bolts on the port wing W19/W18 & W20/W18 with the heads outboard, which is opposite to both my previous photos and the sectioned drawings in the manual. No idea why I did that, and maybe it doesn't matter much, but take them out and reverse them one by one. Fit W19 to inboard W18 on starboard wing. Fit W20 to mid W18 on starboard wing. Assemble W21/OR6/OR7. Assemble W21/FL3 pivot and swing the assembly in between the outboard W18 plates.	3652.2
6	Fit 6-off AN3-4A bolts to secure starboard W21 assembly to the W18s, with washers and greased stiffnuts. Grease OR7B. Fit OR4 to OR1 with castellated nut and split-pin opened only just enough to stop it dropping out. Fit OR5 to OR4. Slide OR4/OR5 between W21s and fit outrigger pivot with castellated nut and split-pin opened slightly. Attach free end of spring OR11 to OR4. Attach OR5 to FL3 and stretch spring OR12 over AN3-11A bolt with spacer OR10. Fit washer and stiffnut. Try flap/outrigger operation and the outrigger won't extend fully. In my efforts to reverse the handing of the drawing in the manual page 9M-23, I have managed to assemble the OR7A parts upside-down, thus preventing full travel of the outrigger. Remove the screws securing OR6/OR7. Slacken nut on the outrigger pivot bolt and on the flap hinge pivot bolt to allow the W21s to spring apart slightly. Remove the OR6/OR7 stack and re-assemble the correct way around. Re-insert between the W21s and re-fit the screws. Re-tighten the other nuts.	3654.1
8	Retrieve the tools and hardware drawers etc that were left in the trailer to the garage and tidy up a bit. Get the cowls out of the trailer and screw them together in the sunshine on the drive. Position balsa ring on front face of cowl and mark with a felt-tip pen the inside edge of the ring. With the powerfile, grind off the gel-coat from the marked line out to the edge of the flat front face of the cowl. Abrade one face of the balsa ring with a Perma-Grit block and degrease both bonding surfaces with acetone. Mix 20g + 8g Redux (Araldite 420) and thicken slightly with a couple of doses of flox. Apply thinly and evenly all round the abraded area on the face of the cowl. Offer up balsa ring and press into position, rotating slightly to ensure a good spread of Redux all round. Check position all round and when satisfied that it is central, place a large aluminium plate on it and the bucket of lead weights on top of that to hold it firmly in place while curing. There is plenty of Redux/flox left so make a start on bonding the Tinnerman washers to the cowl. Mark around each washer with a felt-tip pen. For each washer in turn, remove the screw and the washer. Abrade the underside of the washer with the powerfile while the washer spins on a M5 bolt held in Mole grips. Drop the washer into a small container of acetone to degrease. With the powerfile, grind off the gel-coat around the countersunk screw-hole, trying not to go outside the marked circle. Wipe off dust with acetone-soaked paper tissue. With a narrow spatula, apply Redux/flox to the abraded circle. Air-dry the washer (very quick in this heat!) and position it on the Reduxed area. Re-grease the screw to prevent it getting bonded and drive it home with the electric screwdriver. Wipe off excess Redux and grease with acetone-soaked tissue. Manage to bond in this fashion the 5 washers on the starboard side of the cowl before the Redux starts to gel in the heat, so leave the port side washers until later. Leave the cowl in the sun to cure the bonds; 33C, 21% RH in the shade inside the cowl. Get the transparencies for the doors out from the nose of the trailer and leave in the garage. Later when the cowl is in shadow as the sun goes down, the small amount of Redux squeezed out around the balsa ring appears to have cured quite firmly. Move the complete cowl into the trailer. Re-store the boxes of blue foam etc in the trailer and close it up.	3657.3
9	Open trailer and move boxes for access. With junior hacksaw carefully cut through the balsa ring at each side along the line of the cowl joint. Undo cowl screws and separate cowl halves for storage. Replace boxes and close up trailer. Take starboard door transparency out of its storage bag and try offering it up to the door aperture. Difficult to see how well it might fit, as it is curved to a much tighter radius than the door and needs more hands than I have got to keep it completely in place. Slide it back into its plastic bag. Lay both doors together on the floor with the edges up. Find a piece of plywood large enough to bridge across the edges and lay it on. Put the bucket of lead weights on top and that opens the curve of the acrylic considerably. Leave it like that to see if it will take a better set overnight.	3658.1
11	Take the weight bucket off the door transparencies. Take starboard one out of its bag and try offering it up to the door. It's still a bit too curved to fit really easily, but does seem a bit easier to keep in place than before. The top and bottom corners at the forward edge are now sitting slightly proud, so probably best not to try any more straightening. Mark with a felt-tip pen where some relief of the edges is needed to fit into the door rebate. Try various approaches to remove material around the edges including 80-grit sandpaper, RB10 plane, and Perma-Grit block, but the most effective seems to be the fine side of the millennicut file. Wipe off pen marks with a small amount of alcohol on a paper tissue. (Later note that the received wisdom is to avoid use of alcohol on acrylic because of the potential for crazing and cracking.) Offer up again, mark new tight spots, file down, try fit again until it fits the rebate nicely. However, a quick check of the manual reveals that a 1mm gap from the rebate is needed all round, so mark where the gap is smallest or non-existent and do lots more filing. Try fit, mark tight spots, file, try again until there appears to be a gap of at least a thumbnail all around. Wash the filing dust off the acrylic transparency with plenty of water, washing-up liquid and a microfibre cloth, taking great care in handling as it is now very slippery. Rinse thoroughly with a mist from the garden hose, then dry carefully with a towel. Hard to completely avoid drying marks as the water is evaporating rapidly in the sun. Put it away in its storage bag again. Get the remaining 20 Tinnerman washers out of the packet of cowl screws and abrade them as before with the powerfile, spinning them on a M5 bolt as a mandrel.	3660.8
13	Think about making a tool for safely roughening the bonding surfaces of the door transparencies. Check the width of the starboard door glazing rebate. It's quite wide along the forward edge but about 12mm or 13mm elsewhere and a minimum of 11mm in places. Find an offcut of wood with a suitable depth of rebate already cut in it. Trim the shallow end to 11mm on the bandsaw. Attach strips of 80 grit sandpaper to both faces of the rebate with masking tape. Start to tidy up and catalogue the various collections of small fasteners that have accumulated under the fuselage.	3661.5
20	Tidy up garage floor and roll fuselage out onto drive. Temporarily assemble port shoot-bolt pushrod and door handle. Assemble one hook plate to the lock tang with a spacer to position the tang fairly central on the crest of the pushrod. Try to do the marking with the door closed, but too hard to get a decent view. Instead hold the door open above my head with the pushrod in the closed position. Place the hook plate against the milled section of the pushrod with the tang resting on top of the pushrod. Slide back and forth until hole in tang is central in the access hole. With a long slim felt-tip pen mark through the square hole onto the reinforcement plate. Remove the pushrod. Centre-pop in the marked square and pilot drill 2.6mm. From the outside of the door, enlarge the hole to 12mm with a step drill. Re-assemble the pushrod to the handle. Offer up the hook plate assembly again and mark a line on the reinforcement plate along the edge of the lock tang, for alignment of the oval hole. Working from inside, start to enlarge the hole with a square file. Once the straight edges are visible on the outside, position the toothed washer on the hole and trace around inside it to show the required shape of the hole. With square and round files enlarge the hole to the marked line, checking progress by offering up the lock barrel. Keep filing and checking until the lock barrel just goes in. Try fitting toothed washer to the lock barrel but it won't readily stay in place well enough to get the nut started on the threads. To help with the process, open up the access hole a bit at the top - it seems this pushrod is slightly higher than the starboard one so the hole should really have been made somewhat higher up. Eventually get the washer to stay in place long enough to get the nut started. Can't get the 18mm tubular spanner to engage properly with the nut so enlarge the access hole a bit more so the spanner goes square onto the nut. Now tighten nut firmly to make witness marks on the reinforcement plate with the teeth of the washer. With the powerfile, grind off the gel-coat to check extent of damage to the pre-preg at the aft end of the flap actuator slot. Draw a line all around the damaged area, 50mm clear of it. With powerfile and Perma-Grit block, remove gel coat within and just beyond the marked area. Remove dust and degrease with acetone. Cut a couple of pieces of BID about 200mm x 150mm. Mix a peg-2 (36g) batch of Ampreg 21. Paint the abraded area with the epoxy. Attempt to lay one piece of BID onto the prepared area, but it won't stick and gets out of shape. Discard that and cut another piece. Lay the 2 pieces of BID on polyethylene sheet and wet out in the usual fashion - just enough epoxy left. Offer the layup to the prepared area and it sticks OK this time. Peel off the polyethylene sheet. Trim the BID to just inside the prepared area and stipple down again. Apply peel-ply. Undo lock barrel nut & remove washer. Centre-pop the witness marks from the washer teeth. Drill on the marks with various size bits to make recesses for the teeth as countersinks don't seem to be working this time. Abrade reinforcement plate with powerfile and degrease that and the washer with acetone. Mix a small batch of Evo-Stik 2-hour Control Epoxy and apply it to the bonding face around the hole. Grease the end of the lock barrel and insert it. Apply epoxy to the washer and fit it. Fit the nut and and tighten it with the 18mm tubular spanner.	3666.1
23	Roll fuselage out onto drive. Remove peel-ply from layup by flap actuator slot. All looks OK. Insert port shoot-bolt pushrod and temporarily connect to door handle. Remove circlip, fit lock tang to lock barrel and try offering up a hook plate behind the pushrod. Looks as though it might fit without much adjustment. Remove the tang and assemble the outboard hook plate only to the outboard face of the tang. Try the fit. The hook plate seems close enough to the outboard milled face of the pushrod, although not in contact with it. On the starboard setup a total spacing of 8mm was needed between the hook plates. With the 2mm tang now between the hook plates, will need 6mm thickness of spacers. The spacers need to be about 8mm wide. Cut a couple of pieces that width off the scrapped faulty OR5 piece. Mark each for first hole, centre pop, pilot drill & open to 3mm. Assemble the prepared spacers and the hook plates to the tang and offer up to the square on the lock barrel. Doesn't seem to quite go home - I can't get the circlip to fit. It looks as though the top aft corner of the outboard hook plate is fouling the edge of the lock housing.	3667.9

go to previous page of journal	go to list of narrative pages	go to next page of journal
	Return to Rowland's home page

This page last updated 2022-10-06 23:40. I try to make this page as accessible as possible, by adhering to HTML 4 standards.
I welcome comments on this website. However, because of the amount of spam it attracts, I no longer post a direct e-mail address on any page. Instead, please click here to contact me. You will have to confirm that you are human before the message will be sent on to me.