Painting: Paint Booth Prep

Not a whole lot of plane production this past month, due to camping, out-of-town trips and company over. I did manage to get the paint booth built, however. Will be running a high volume low air pressure (HVLP) spray outfit. Never done anything like this before, so a little nervous. Supplied breathing air will come through from garage door side and paint exhaust will be through window-mounted fan. As soon as I get a free evening, I'll get started. Think I'll start with the ailerons. Also took some time getting tooled up and configured for painting. Needed a larger 33 gal volume tank compressor and spray gun (DeVilbiss). I calibrated the gun settings by spraying with water (similar viscosity to paint) on cardboard.

As a side project this summer, I built the boys a treehouse. Originally considered Walmart playset, but with cost of lumber down was able to build this for nearly same cost.

Covering: Right Wing: Tape

YIPPEE! Covering is finally entirely complete. I began in early December, so over 9 1/2 months! First pic shows attachment of rib tapes at LE for marking of edges on fabric for glue application.


Next couple pics show glue applied to tape width.



Here's me attaching rib tape to glued areas with thinned MEK.


And after ironing pinked edges and cleanup of residual glue with MEK, here are completed pics.

Next, setup paint booth and prepare for HVLP painting.

Right Wing: Covering: Patches

The exit rings, inspection rings and lexan strips were glued and riveted onto the right wing, respectively. Patches were glued over the rings. Following are pics of wing bottom. Some sweltering August nights were encountered, therefore, pardon the topless pics.

Right Wing: Covering

Both top and bottom panels are now installed on the right wing. Top panel went on first, here you can see glued edges around top LE and TE spars.

Next couple pics show thinned glue application to sheet metal surfaces which dissolves and wicks underlying glue into fabric weave.

Here is pre-tautened top fabric.

Next pics show glue application to areas to receive bottom fabric panel. Two coats of glue were applied.

Here I am applying thinned glue to fabric LE of bottom panel.

Final tautening of wing fabric to 350 degrees with an iron. Gotta love August in the UP, warm nights and no bugs; the rare occasion when you can let the garage doors fly open without risk of heat loss or blood loss. Now need to get the covering done so can begin painting before the snow flys!

Rotax 912 ULS Arrives

The 100 hp engine arrived last week and survived shipment from Austria to KS to MI. Amazing how the entire box weighed little more than 100 lbs. The light weight must be why the thing costs so dang much. Since I won't need it for quite awhile, I decided to hide the box in the basement where uniform temp and humidity. Boys haven't decided to square dance on it....yet...

Camoflaging appears to have worked.

Right Wing: Dynon Remote Compass

I fabricated a mount and installed the remote compass near the right wing tip above the inspection opening and mount for the lift reserve indicator. In following pics, you can see the previously fabricated LRI sheet metal spanner between the ribs with the hole opening for the LRI probe mounted to an inspection plate. For the compass mount, I riveted a double strip of aluminum sheet to two plastic clamps which were then attached to the 1" compression tube. Since the compass was not very stable mounted to just this location, I then made and riveted a sheet metal support to the other in-board side. The remote compass was then secured to an aluminum platform with bolts. This platform was then sandwiched between the supports on each side with a bolt and wingnut. As a result, adjustments in pitch angle can be made by rotating the compass/platform assembly, as the leading face of the compass must match the angle of the instrument on the panel.

At this location, the compass is away from any magnetic interference, such as ferrous metal and electrical currents.

Addendum: After talking with Dynon, I decided that I would modify the compass mount to rotate in the roll axis as well. The current horizontal installation will rotate later when the wings are attached and dihedral is built into the wings so that the tips bow upward. I wanted flexibility to rotate the compass to negate this and maintain true horizontal attitude.

Covering: Left Wing: Tape

The left wing is complete. Following are pics of the taping process. For the tape over the ribs, I decided to straight-line the tape from LE spar to TE spar at rib locations, rather than tape directly centered over each rib. Several of the ribs were not perfectly straight, so I thought this would enhance appearance. I first tacked the LE tape down with glue, let dry, then pulled tight and electrical taped at the TE spar. I marked edges of pinked taped with a pencil and then laid a bead of glue on the fabric in between. Finally, I laid the tape over the dried glue and applied thinned glue to the top of the tape and underlying glue.

A lot of effort was spent ironing down the pinked edges of the 2" and 4" tapes so that they would definitely lay adhered following painting and movement of the slipstream over the wing.

Here are completed pics of left wing. Next, I will need to fabricate a platform for a remote compass or magnetometer, which I will mount in the right wing prior to covering. This unit needs to be installed away from any ferrous material or electrical wiring (magnetic interference) and will serve to provide heading indication (among other things?) on a Dynon glass cockpit EFIS/EMS that I will purchase later. I will mount it adjacent to LRI mount/inspection plate inside the wing with the ability to rotate the unit in pitch/roll axes for future adjustment.