Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Move to the airport and prepare for Airworthiness Inspection

Hours 41
Total Hours 1912


My brother and his brother in law was kind enough to let me borrow their hanger at the airport in Big Spring, Texas. It has a 8,800' runway and all kind of safety features that will factor in my first flight.


We removed the wings after I did a little vinyl work adding a red stripe. This wasn't the stripe I had planned but I am running a little short of time and it will do until I have more time to work on it.



We loaded the fuselage up on my utility trailer. Had to modify the rail on the end of the trailer so the main gear tires would fit but it was no big deal.


 We hauled the plane to the airport 25 miles away and had no problems. I drove very slow and used gust locks to secure the tail feathers. Then we made another trip for the wings and all my tools, tables, ect.


Once settled in the hanger, my brother and fellow pilot, Scotty, helped me attach the wings for the FINAL time. Boy was I glad to get that set of close tolerant wing bolts out to use! The bolts were not nearly as hard to get in as I thought they would be. I made sure the holes in the spar was very clean and oiled the bolts with light oil. The nuts were all torqued to spec. Yes, I installed the two AN4 short bolts in the center a little later.


I installed ailerons and flaps back on the plane using all new hardware and locknuts. All was torqued to spec. I double checked my control surface throws. I also permanently installed all the center section wiring and aileron attach points. Hooked up pitot and angle of attack lines and wing lighting connections.


I had some time before the inspection so Nancy and I wrapped the wingtips and tail feather tips with the hot rod red 3M 1080 vinyl. I installed the interior and all the fairings and did some taxi tests and put enough fuel in it for the first flight. The Classic Aero aviator seats are great and the carpet package really quieted down the noise level in the cockpit. Radio works good and the engine is running great............I then took out all the interior, floor pans, fairings, and inspection covers to get ready for the Airworthiness Inspection!

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Paint and Transitional Training

Hours 182
Total Hours 1871

It has been a while since I've updated the blog. I have been in a final push to finish this plane. I took one hitch at the rig off so I have 6 weeks to wrap this project up and maybe get it in the air.


 First, I built an extra set of sawhorses. I also built various stands to hold parts like wheel pants and fairings. I built brackets to hold all the parts like the rudder so I could flip them from one side to the other while painting. I didn't take any pictures of these brackets but they worked great. I would just screw them on to the sawhorses. I had tried painting parts hanging from wires and it didn't work well for me.


First step in the painting process for the aluminum parts is a good cleaning and then acid etching. The Eko-Etch is sprayed on and then the part is completely gone over with a scotch bright pad. Then it is rinsed with a towel and bucket of clean water. The etch solution is not allowed to dry before it is wiped off. It must stay on for at least 3 minutes.


Then the parts are washed thoroughly with a pressure washer to remove any leftover etch solution.


My hanger has never been this messed up with parts sitting all around in various stages of being painted!


First, all the parts were primed with Stewart systems Eko-Prime smoke grey primer. The spraying was very easy but all the parts had to be sanded afterwards. That turned up some, well many, imperfections that had to be fixed and then primed again. Using the advice from Dan at Stewart systems, I used a two part glazing putty to fix small imperfections such as pinholes and on occasion, I had to fill with more micro-epoxy mix or Super Fill. Sanding off and re-priming until I thought my arms would fall off! I wish I could have spent some time with a professional painter to see how they handle all the imperfections. They must have better methods other wise the time involved in painting would be crazy!


Armed, and ready for battle! Actually I started painting a few of the parts without the goggles and shoot-suite. Waterborne paint cant be that bad, right? Wrong! My eyes burned and itched and my ears started turning red. This took several days to heal up from! I decided to pull out the shoot suite and goggles, fast!


My first parts looked really good and shiny! At least, I thought so at first. The Ekocrylic seemed to be pretty forgiving as far as runs and orange peel. The paint flowed out good.

I had a problem with lint. I started wiping off the part before painting with a alcohol  moistened terry cloth rag. This was a big mistake as the alcohol would make the primer sticky and pull minute fibers off the rag. These were undetected  on the first batch of parts until they were painted. They had to be sanded smooth and re-painted.


 This was a big batch of parts. The tack coats and fog coats are about 10-15 minutes apart and when you are comfortable with the color saturation, you shoot the wet coat. In this pic you can see how I used brackets to mount the elevators on the sawhorses. This allowed me to paint both sides by flipping the part. It also proved useful as I could position the part to get the reflection from the lights needed for shooting the wet coat.


 Here is a painted wing.


Notice the bracket I built for the wings. It is bolted onto the spar and allows me to rotate the wing at any angle. The set screw in the larger pipe on the part screwed onto the sawhorse holds the wing at any angle. The other end has a 4" aluminum pipe stuck into the middle hole in the end rib and rolls free on another sawhorse. This worked great and could be used on any sawhorse.......................I was really rockin and rollin and thought I was doing great until I decided to repaint a wheel pant half that had a run on it. After I repainted it, I put it together with the other half and found that the repainted half was "whiter"  than the half that was only painted once! I began looking at other parts that was painted twice against parts painted once and I became frustrated! I could not live with some parts being more "white" or  " color saturated" than the others.


I placed all the parts out in the yard in the sun and Nancy and I evaluated the situation. Although, it was hard to tell the difference, I wound up painting a lot of parts a second time, including the top half of both wings. This brings up my main beef with Stewart Systems Paint! The directions call to use smoke grey primer with white paint. My advice to you, if you are considering using SS white paint, is to use the white primer! I repainted the parts. This caused me to have to order another gallon of paint and some white Eko-Prime for the fuselage. Actually, I only used a couple quarts of that gallon but this delayed me a week and I was not about to run out again! It was probably a good thing to put an extra coat on theses parts as I plan to cut and buff the top surfaces after I get flying.


Trim colors? the only trim I'm putting on at this time was my checkerboard rudder and flaps. My cousin is a graphics designer and made me paint masks. I applied these to the rudder after the white coat had cured.


I sprayed the black SS paint. Easy. The only tedious thing was peeling these vinyl squares off the rudder later without marring the paint. I would have liked to peel them before the black was cured and let the edges flow out but I tried and made a mess with the first one because the black wet paint was everywhere.


I set the rudder on the VS and screwed it to a sawhorse to see how it looked. The red tip is just electrical tape and the emblem is a water transfer decal I made on my computer. The red will be replaced with vinyl later and the emblem may be. This one looks pretty good so I may just use it! To be honest with you, the vinyl squares looked very good before I painted. For this reason, I did not paint the squares on the bottom of my flaps, just left the vinyl ones.


Everything is looking better now. I did take time to cut and buff (color sand)  the top half of the cowl. It looks great and I was thankful I had that extra coat of paint on it when I started sanding.


So, while I was waiting on the extra paint and white primer to come it from Washington (UPS must have used a buckboard and a team of mules cause it took 8 days)  I prepared the fuselage for painting. Acid etched and rolled into position in the paint booth. My faithful assistant is holding the tail while I take the picture. The tail is very light without the the tail feathers and makes me very nervous! All I need, is a prop strike before the first flight!


I have the tailwheel wired to a couple of 100lb tractor weights. When it is raised, the nose is actually heavier than the tail and will stay in position. This proved to be handy as I was priming and painting the bottom of the fuselage.


While getting ready, I wondered how I was going to lay down and spray upside down with my paint gun? I didnt want to buy another hundred dollar gadget (plastic paint cup liners for painting at all angles) so I bought a 3/8" street ell. It worked fine. I layed on my back on a creeper and primed the bottom of the plane. Was not too bad but my arms did get pretty tired. Later, when painting white, I had to hold a flood lamp in one hand while painting to get a reflection to judge the amount of wet coat. I wasn't all that concerned about the quality of the bottom paint job as no one will ever see it so I hurried thru it. Wouldn't you know, It turned out the best of all the surfaces! Absolutely, no orange peel and very very smooth! I guess I was just trying too hard on all the rest of the parts.


  I primed and sanded several areas of the fuse several times and repaired some dings and rough spots. Then I shot white primer. Light sanded everything. Then shot the bottom fuse. I then removed the street ell on the paint gun and shot the rest of the fuse. it turned out great! Using the white primer, it was easy to get full color saturation. Other than a few bugs and some minor orange peel, it turned out great! I am so excited to be finished painting! It has been a journey getting thru this stage!


Re assembly begins.



Since this was the last time to assemble the tail, I was very meticulous about using new bolts and nuts and correct torque values! The left elevator was slightly aft heavy and the right one was slightly nose heavy. After connecting them, they balanced perfectly and moved very free. I had researched balancing the elevators and found out that it is perfectly except-able to balance the two together as a unit.
 


 We put the wings on again using hardware store bolts as I will remove them later for the move to the airport. We loosely installed everything including the complete interior with the seat belts. Any hardware that was not installed was placed at the install area it belonged. I leveled the plane at normal flight attitude on a set of certified race car scales I rented from Avery Tools in Ft Worth to compute the weight and balance. I was worried it would come in heavy because of the complete Classic Aero interior and the extra coat of paint on some of the parts. Why weight before moving? I wanted to send my inspector the needed paperwork to arrange for the inspection.



1123lbs! Not the lightest but not that bad. My main mission is a comfortable traveling plane for Nancy and I. Even with the heavy CS prop, the CG came out a little farther aft as I would like it, 81.25". Maybe, after I get thru cut and buffing I need to re-weigh as paint makes the tail heavier.




Somewhere along the way, before I weighed the plane, I installed a canopy lock, reworked my exhaust hangers, installed the rubber stripping on the wing root fairings, and numerous small odds and ends along the way.



Besides the airplane painting I accomplished during this period, I also drove to Midlothian, Texas to get transition training with Alex DeDominicis on April 3-4. Alex is a great instructor and I really enjoyed flying his RV7. I acquired 5 hrs even though my insurance just asked for 1 hour. We had windy conditions but that is probably a good thing. The plane handled beautifully and made me really excited about finishing mine! Besides coaching me on flying and landing the 7, Alex and I talked about all the things to be aware of on my first flight. I highly recommend Alex for training and he was very helpful with the scheduling me in at the last moment.


Still need some vinyl trim and N numbers. Hopefully, we can get this baby transported to the airport, finished up, and inspected soon!