438 hours - down ill for a week but back at it again

SO my last post was a week ago this past Saturday. On Sunday the 22nd I had another long day of airplane work done. Only problem was, by dinner time on that Sunday I was starting to feel like death warmed over. I very cold breeze was flowing right through me. I managed to make it to work on Monday but then everything really came crashing down. I went to bed immediately after getting home Monday evening, and went dtraight to bed, wearing all my work clothes AND my heavy winter coat under the covers just to stay warm, shivering like crazy with fever. Long story short, spent the rest of the week and home, was diagnosed with a really bad case of strep, got the antibiotics from the doc, and have been fighting to recover ever since. I am almost there, but it likes to hang on during these final stages and only give me small amounts of recovery each day, just to keep me in check I guess. Tonight was really the first time I have gotten back to airplane building since I fell ill.

Needless to say not much airplane work done, but got some things done:since my last post:
1. Researched and ordered a set of key hole wire strippers from Sears after finding out that the folks at the Ray Allen company are using them for their shop work on all the tiny 26 gauge tefzel wires they use to manufacture their trim servos. Unfortunately Sears would not sale the one stripper I needed by itself. It only came as a set with 3 other stripper tools. But at $45.00, compared to the $220.00 the Ideal automatic wire stripper was going to cost me, I decided it was worth the investment. The part number of the stripper is 73574, and is supposed to strip 22 to 32 AWG stranded wire. After practicing a bit, it still slices clean through about 4 of the 19 strands of wire in each conductor, but perhaps with some more practice I can prevent this from happening.

2. Finished priming adn installing the servo mounting brackets onto the cover plate for the trim tab servo. Used AN 1097 "Oops" rivets for the two rivets on the lowest side of the mounting brackets so that I would not have to dimple the cover plate and the mounting bracket holes which would have interfered with the bottom of the trim servo cover. This is a well known problem and the solution works great. Get the Oops rivet set from Avery Tools.

3. Cut my push rod for the trim servo according to my specs - about 3 and 5/8 inches. I think this will work out just about right. I cut the rod with the dremel cutoff wheel, then deburred the ends on the grinder so that the two stop nuts can be screwed onto the threaded rod. These will snug up under the base of each clevis to prevent the rod from turning, although this is such a snug assembly that I don't think here is much chance of that ever happening.

4. I have all but completed the trim tab, however I had two MK319-BS pop rivets on the bottom of the outboard edge that did not sit down in the dimples very well, and so I tried to drill one of them out tonight. I don't know what is going on, but I cannot drill this SOB'n thing out!. My drill bits just spin and do not remove any material. Now I need to find out what is going on and how to rememdy this little problem. Should have just left them alone.

5. I trimmed up the outboard edge of the elevator that sits next to the outboard edge of the trim tab. Vans wants a minimum of 3/32 inches clearance to prevent any possibility of binding, which is very wise. The problem is that there is about 1/32 inch of play in between each of the eyelets in the hinge, so you have to decide if you want 3/32 inches with the pay or without the play, and file the edges down accordingly. I decided to trim it without allowing for the play, so that means that with the play there is only about 1/16 inches of clearance. I will see what the tech counselors say when they come to visit. The problem is, until you get the trim tab and the trim servo installed for the last time, you can't know exactly how the hinge will position itself through the entire range of motion. Also, until you perform final trimming of the edges of the elevator, you cannot finish installing the last riblet. Everything depends on everything else. Makes you wonder how you ever move forward on this project sometimes.

Anyway, the edges are nice and straight. I must have messed up my initial measurements whne trying to determine where to cut the tabs off of the elevator a long time ago, because the gap on the bottom side was already pretty much where it needed to be, but I still needed to remove about another 3/32 of material from the top skin edge to get the proper clearance on that side. Careful use of the dremel tool and a file took care of that in almost no time at all.

6. The last thing I did tonight was to mark the hole locations on the elevator riblet and transfer them onto the elevator as best I could. Again, if I had it to do over again I would probably form my own riblets so that the flanges would have no predrilled holes in them at all, and then it would be a snap to drill the holes through both the skin AND the riblet, instead of trying to reverse-match drill the damn things so that the existing holes in each riblet can be used.

I bought a 25 watt soldering iron for the electrical wiring work, and also a small slender heat gun designed specifically for working with electronics wiring projects and heat shrink tubing in tight places. I think I can even fabricate a metal spout to attach to the existing one to ahve total control over the area to which the heat is applied, so that I do not risk damaging the plastic or other components of the switches or other things I will be installing.

Oh yeah also went to see the movie Red Tails with the RV Denver clan a week ago. That was fun and it was good to see most everybody again.

Anyway, no pics tonight cuz I am still in recovery, and I am too tried to upload all of them. Will try to do that tomorrow. PLan is to get the final riblet drilled, deburred, and riveted tomorrow, and then hopefully I can start working on rolling some leading edges.