Wing spars relocated back on the work bench

As part of my ongoing major re-organization effort of the garage, I managed to clear off enough space from the work benches to allow me to move the spars from the shelf on the wall to the benches. I had not seen them for a while, and it felt good to get them down from "storage" so I can start match drilling ribs and skins and such.

The only problem I encountered whne attempting to move them from the shelf to the bench was that all of the parts that were stored on the shelf had been buried by almost 1 inch of shingle remnant when the jerks put my new roof on the house. THey did a great job cleaning up around the perimeter of the house but nobody even mentioned anything about checking and cleaning up my garage. This really pissed me off, but at the same time I realized that this was mostly my fault for leaving them "in harms way" adn not covering them with a tarp or something. I guess I just did not expect to ahve that much crap fall down into the garage.

IN any event, it looks like I was able to vacuum up most of the stuff, but this kind of thing always makes me nervous when I start thinking about all the little pieces tht may still be buried underneath the metal that will not show their ugly face until the vibration from the finished plane finally jars them loose, adn then who know what crevace they may find to deposit themselves into that end up affecting a critical flight control or something.

Here is the first of several pics - lovely shingle crap and sawdust all over my left elevator, and most certainly inside the bay where the electric servo and linkage  goes - the one place that I really don't want to have any of this crap in my airplane, where it can be fatal if something goes wrong.

Edit - and a happy new year to me!! Turns out that blogspot has had problems with uploading images apparently since clear back on January 4. Smells like a virus or even better a ploy to push users away from IE and onto Google chrome or Firefox browsers. Having recently had problems at work with Firefox's latest release, I am now leary of downloading anyone's browser. That said, it does seem that Firefox v 17.0.1 does not have the problem that IE does (do NOT under any circumstances install Firefox v 18.0 - very bad!).

Anyway, to continue - here is the pics of my roof debris covered airplane parts, starting with the left elevator:

Next is the rear spar:

And on a happier note, here are the main wing spars back on the bench. Unfortunately, my HS is still on the table in front of the bench, and I need to finish up some touch up work on the HS so I can hang it back up on the wall to free up the table so I can start attaching ribs - it just never ends.

Still dealing with another deep freeze that has put the stops on anything in the garage. Now working on the cleanup of the benches in the basement - getting tired of living in the junk heap of a house. Almost ready to break out the two fire pits that I own and start some serious burning!

And finally, this is better late than never I guess. A couple of weeks ago I attended a hangar party up at KBJC for a gathering of RV folks across the state. Compliments to Bob Market, who owns this awesome hangar which will soon house Ron Duren's RV-7. I met several people that I had never met before, and made some new friends along the way. Here is a list of things that happened up there:

1. Got a close up view of Sean Thomas' Metal Wing stands. I will post some additional pics of that in another post, but here is a teaser pic for now. Sean is doing a great job.

2. Finally got to see Sean B, who had some very bad luck last summer after his house, and nearly completed RV7 were lost in a large fire near Colorado Springs. It was really great to see him and to find out that he is actually back to building another 7 again and doing his best to put the fire behind him. Kudos to you Sean. I admire your intestinal fortitude! KPR my friend.
3. I got to meet Jim Gray, owner and builder of the 2010 grand champion homebuilt award at Oshkosh for his beautifully finished RV-8, which was finished in the colors of the Jolly Roger Squadron seen in so many movies, including Top Gun and GI Jane. I took a ton of pics and got to pick Jim's brain for some building tips for such things as the forward baggage door, etc.

4. As if that was not enough, I then got a chance to talk with Bob Markert, who is now working on his fuselage. Get ready for alot of green - I just love the color of the primer he is using:

Note the mockup of the instrument panel - alot of Garmin goodies going in this one. He also has a rear seat throttle that I am also considering putting in the back as a safety feature more than anything else. I am NOT going to put the rear rudder pedals in mine - too many stories from other folks about ineffective control and uncomfortable foot position for the rear seat occupant. here is the forward throttle quadrant  - very similar to what I am going to do.

And the rear throttle:

And here is shot of an improvement over the stock landing gear provided by Vans - Grove lnding gear struts are made from one piece leaf spring steel (I think), and they are designed to carry the hydraulic brake fluid inside the actual strut instead of from a separate brake line that is typically strapped to the the landing gear strut. These also serve to eliminate the need to make fairings for the landing gear legs since they already come aerodynamically shaped.

And finally a shot of one of the auxiliary fuel tanks that fit at the tip of each wing. These are from SafeAir and are very expensive (about 1500.00 for the pair), and they give you about an hour of extra fuel. I plan on getting the bungle kit which is simply the fuel line fitting that is added to the main fuel tank which connects to the fuel line coming from the aux tank shown below. I will simply cap this off for potential future use shold I decide to add the aux tanks at a later time. Part of the tank fits inside the wing tip (bottom of pic), and the rest of it (long tube) fits inside the lightening holes of the outer wing ribs. It was very cool to see these up close.

Then Bob showed me a custom windscreen that he ordered from the same company that makes the canopies for Vans. The stock canopy comes molded as one full unit that must be cut and trimmed to create the wind screen and the separate bubble canopy. I had no idea that you could order just the wind screen by itself. I learn something every day.

So it was one hangar, good friends, good food, good conversation, and a mind blowing awesome experience to see flying RVs and RVs under construction all in the same place. It certainly had an airplane factory feel to it. Now I just need to get back to pounding some rivets! All for now.

Fundamental Decisions About Cockpit Layout

This post starts with a recent attempt by me to search VAF for some info about Wing Stands and Jigs that may have been posted by Paul Dye (VAF user Ironflight). This is a gentleman whose wealth of knowledge I have come to greatly respect throughout my experiences thus far with building the RV8. He contributes articles frequently for Kit Plane Magazine and was a systems engineer for the Space Shuttle and Space Station programs at NASA. If anyone knows about all things "experimental" when it cmes to aviation - he is certainly one of those individuals.

Anyway I had heard that he had a simple wing jig solution and I was trying to find a post to that effect - that is until I stumbled on a couple of posts from him back in 2006 after his RV-8 Valkyrie was completed and flying. Doug Reeves, founder of VAF, had captured several pics of his panel layout, and as I started studying the photos there were some comments about the reasoning behind his panel layout that I did not want to lose reference to.

So this post is now dedicated to a small tidbit of information about some things that I must not forget when the time comes to figure where all the goodies will go in my instrument panel and various consoles on either side of the pilot seat. I like Paul's reasoning for why he put certain things in certain locations, and will plan on emulating those same considerations in my own plane when the time comes. Here is a list:

1. Overall he tried to group common items in the same locations to make it easier to locate systems with similar functions.

2. All primary electrical switches are located on the right console next to the pilot seat

3. All engine-related controls are placed on the left console, including the engine monitor.

4. He used a rail system on either side of any essential electrical switches to provide a bit of stability for manipulating the switches during turbulence - a technique used extensively at NASA. Gee, I wonder why?! The rails provide a platform to rest your fingers against to help actuate the switch, and it also prevents inadvertent activation of a switch by bumping into it with your hand or your knee, etc.

5. He placed his avionics that require the most interaction with the hand and fingers so that his dominant hand performs the actions such as turning small knobs or pushing small buttons, etc. He discussed this with some human factors engineers at NASA after initially planning to place the radios in the opposite location. His initial thinking was that his dominant hand should be focused on flying the plane so that it would be on the stick, and the weak hand would do all the radio switching and tuning work. He was advised to change his perspective, and allow his dominant hand to take care of the fine motor skill work, and the weak hand to focus on the joystick work. For me this means that the radios and GPS should be on the right side of the Primary flight displays if at all possible.

5. Then I encountered some interesting tidbits about nav/strobe combination lights. I noted that Paul seemed to have a 3-position switch for his strobes - top was ALL, middle is OFF, and bottom is TAIL ONLY. My current thinking was to put a combination red/white beacon on the bottom of the fuselage if that will satisfy the FAA requirements for visibilty to the rear. I also finally found post in the builders log from someone else that confirmed that the Wing tip Strobe location that Vans provides DOES NOT meet the requirements for rearward visibility of the anti-collision loght system, and therefore this discrepancy in their design needs to be addressed somehow. Putting the strobes in the wing tips, as most people do, only allow visiblity from the side and the front, and NOT from the rear. This is, in essence, a violation of the relevant FARS that I have reffered to in previous posts that is excrutiatingly specific about the distance, number of lumens, and angular visiblity requirements for the required exterior light systems.

6. One last thing that I noted about his overall panel layout, as well as those from several other builders, is that he retains the basic scan format with his backup airspeed indicator positioned on the left side of the EFIS display (which provides attitude display in addition to the other information when everything is working), and the altimeter on the other side. The backup attitude indicator is located elsewhere on the panel. I have seen several builders emulate this configuration, and then I have seen others that tend to try to keep all 3 backup instruments in one line across. The problem is that the EFIS is always in the way in the small panel space provided by the RV-8. This makes positioning all 3 backup instruments together in a location that will be readily viewable by a pilot that needs to use them in an emergency a bit of a challenge.

There are numerous schools of thought out there on the positioning of the backup instruments. One interesting insight is that if the backup instruments are located in a position that is readily viewable by the pilot most of the time, then the they tend to focus on the back up instruments instead of the EFIS for primary flying tasks, even when the EFIS is working perfectly. I am almost of the opinion on this that I would rather have a backup EFIS on a secondary power system so that not matter if the primary EFIS fails, I am still maintaining reference to flight instruments from a similar display. Works pretty well if you have the extra cash and the extra panel space to go with it such as in a side by side RV like the RV-7, etc. This does not work as well in the RV-8, where panel space is at a premium. Anyway, when the time comes, I may keep the backup round dials in a single line or I may break up the attitude indicator - just not quite sure how I will decide to do that yet.

There was also a comment about putting a combo nav light/strobe in the tail. Somebody mentioned that this is a major distraction for a low wing airplane at night, with the light reflecting off the wings from the rear, possible entering your peripheral vision. So he recommended not putting a strobe in the rear. I am hoping my decision to place this system on the bottom of the fuselage eliminates this problem, but I am worried about electrical noise affecting the ADAHRS unit for the EFIS, which will also be mounted in the rear of the airplane.

So much for checking out wing jigs! Here is the link to the post that contains Ironflight's panel photos.

IF I can just shed some of the cold weather that finally appeared in Colorado I am just about ready to re-engage in the wing work. Personally I will be glad when the holidays are done and over with - I need to get back to building an airplane.