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Feb 2005: Sumps and Panels

Those Kindergarten skills are paying off Big Time.

1) Cardboard mockup of the new LongEZ Sump Tank

2) Pieces cut out of 3/8 inch foam.

3) First shot a Vacuum Bagging, This was not really "Vacuum Bagging" but a method described by the Cozy Girrrls as "LowVac". Significantly lower cost, and does what I need to do, light and good looking parts. (Thanks Girls)

4) The finished parts are now assembled and glassed inside.

5) The Firewall is fairly cleaned up, The terminal boards on the left need to get moved. After years of just adding stuff in the available space, this will be a shot at putting stuff back on the firewall in an orderly fashion. First Priority is cooling. Notice the hole in the bottom were the NACA scoop used to be! All of this area gets re-glassed, then a new steel firewall sheet is to be installed.

6) Removed unused instruments, removed nose gear crank, Most of the steam gauges are being replaced by electronic.

7) This is the New Hell Hole. All glassed in and ready. The arae once taken up by the NACA scoop has been reclaimed, and will now be used for my Fuel Sump. The Sump (photo4) fits in here, along with the hydraulic pump and a couple main gear relays and solenoids. Same situation as the firewall. Years of just putting add on stuff in a place that fits. The hell hole will now be cleaned up, and up to date.

8) WAITERS WEB CAM - Although This is the kind of stuff I enjoy doing, I'm trying to stay focused on getting my plane flying again. So I have to refrain from getting caught up in software, and try and get the hardware out the door. At any rate, I updated the NetToWeb Software that I wrote, to support the addition of the "Update Time" and also "Update Text" on the web site. I am also now recording the "uploaded" images. These will be nice for archiving. This software looks like it might be nice to make available to others. I'll see if I can put something together this week.

20 Feb 2005: Nose and Tail

There was recent talk on how to jack up a LongEZ. My EZ will jack itself up, no need to break my back.

1) With the LongEZ parked on its nose, Slide the rear support under the fuselage.

2) Raise the nose, and it lifts the rear landing gear off the ground.

NOT SHOWN. I have a wedge I put under the nose tire, When I extend the nose, it rides up on the wedge and then I slide the forward support under the fuselage.

3) I retract the nose and the fuselage settles down onto the forward support.All three tires are off the ground.

4) I installed new bearing supports for the nose gear. Also installed the replacement spacer for the new NG-6. I lost the original in a snow bank between the house and the shop. Jack was kind enough to mail me a new one ( EZNose Lift).

The nose gear is now complete, there is absolutely no play in it at all.

5) The big job this weekend was cleaning out the Hell Hole. All the wires, tubes etc were bundled up and the floor of the New Hell hole was prepped and glassed.

The New Hell hole will contain my sump tanks, (no more blisters), and the main gear hydraulic pump and switches.Hopefully, I'll start building that stuff this week.

19 Feb 2005:WEB SITE Day

Time to do some maintenance on the site. Notice I've added a live feed from my workshop. This has been an interesting project (I can see I need to write an article about this). Basically, I wrote a program that will take snapshots from my Network Cam, look at it to see if there is movement, create a thumbnail, then upload it to my web site. I still have a couple bugs, but it looks like its been working most of the week, and I haven't clobbered my network or bandwidth.

I split the main page (this page), it was getting to large. I will split it into months in order to keep browser upload times to a minimum. I've added links at the top and bottom of the pages to help you navigate, and also on the left to go directly to the page you want. (High speed really spoils you)

PHOTOS ARE NOW SMALLER -I re-sampled all the photos to get them to a more respectable size. If you find a photo that is still large, let me know and I'll resample it. I apologize for wasting your bandwidth. I'll be more careful in the future. If you would like a High Resolution copy of any of the photos, email me and I'll send it to you.

Oh yah, If your interested in setting up a web site, Please consider Ace-Host as your host, its about a good of a deal you'll get, and if you use the hyperlink on the left, It helps me pay my web site bills. (PLUG FOR ACENET, NUF SAID)

OK, Back to work on the plane!!!

13 Feb 2005:Busy Weekend

This has been a very productive weekend, Five major tasks completed, The LongEZ is back on its gear, Aircraft Cradles built, Gear simulator completed, Manometer completed and article submitted, Resampled all the JPGs on the site.

I apologize to all those that have limited bandwidth. The Photos I've been posting were approximately 250kb I resampled all of them and most are around 25kb. This should speed things up considerable.

1) Rolling the LongEZ back on its gear. 5 minute job.

2) 961EZ is on its new gear. Still a lot of work to do, install hydraulics, install fuel sumps, etc.

Note the two cradles. I built these to put under the plane during gear testing, but they will also be used for ongoing maintenance. The plane can actually lift itself onto these cradles by lowering the nose gear, then putting the cradle under the aft fuselage.

3) This is the stand I use to support the plane when its upside down. Two each 2x4s and a 2x6, bolted together, and attach to the engine mount. Very stable.

4) This is the new gear computer (black box) and the aircraft simulator. I use the simulator while writing the program for the computer. The simulator will also be used for testing / troubleshooting problems with the gear. To give you an idea of the physical dimensions, the yellow card is actually an 8 -1/2 x 11 sheet of yellow card stock that's taped to a piece of Lexan. This controller will take the place of the original Infinity Aerospace controller, and the original nose lift controller. Both the Infinity Aerospace, and the EZNose Lift are now integrated into one controller and switch.

5 & 6) I finished the Manometer, and submitted the article to EAA. Also checked a couple airspeed indicators I had laying around. I'll be using the Dynon EFIS as my main flight instrument. Check out the Manometer Article

12 Feb 2005:Bottom Closed up, No More NACA Scoop

1) For those of you who haven't seen expanding foam, I was using two of these soup cans to mix in (part A and B). When I was finished, I had a little left in each can, so I mixed them. The total combined amount (part A and B) went to the top of the UPC code (about 3/4 inch). You can see what happens in about 5 minutes. Its hard and ready to work in less than 1 hour. DO NOT use this stuff for structural foam, Its very brittle and continues to outgas forever.

2) There's been a lot of speculation about what happens to the rear seat if you land this thing on its belly. Will the bottom glass lay-ups grind away to expose the rear seat? I doubt it, but, I wanted to not only protect the rear seat occupant, but also the sump tank that is sitting in the hell hole. Someone made the statement, Why not put a piece of Oak in the bottom. Lights came on, That's easy. What you see is a piece of 1/2 inch plywood, The plane should be stopped before it grinds away.

3) Foaming up the holes where the fixed gear used to be. Also foaming in the old NACA scoop. (I'm converting to downdraft cooling).

4) Fuselage bottom is glassed in. Little bit of filler and some paint, and we're ready! (I wish)

The lay-ups were 2 layers of UNI, full span, oriented parallel to the wings, There were also two partial UNIs that only cover the last 6 inches of the fuselage, also oriented parallel to the wings. Two full span BIDs 45 degrees to the fuselage.

10 Feb 2005:Wheel Well Insert Lay-ups

I pondered over this for several days, trying to figure out the best way to do this. When you stop and look at the problem, there really is no other solution. The drawing below is modified slightly from drawing in the original Infinity Aerospace Installation manual. Basically, I made sure the insert stuck up a little so I could capture a portion of the outside wall, I added a little more FLOX, and one layer of BID.

One of the challenges of performing the retrofit, getting the wheel well insert to become part of the structure, and just as important, DON'T LEAK.

NEW INSTALL - If this is a new installation, this is easy, because the wheel well would be installed before the top skin of the strake is installed. The liner is sealed with a bead of flox all the way around on the inside.

RETROFIT - Because its a retrofit, you can't get to the inside to run that bead of flox. All of the seal and structure must be done from the outside. The drawing above is a slightly modified version of the Infinity Aerospace instructions.

Using flox as the structural component, I wanted to make sure I captured the inside of the insert, and the inside of both the top and bottom strake skins. This would form a structural bond, and also provide three layers of defense against a fuel leak.<

A forth layer of defense and additional structural bonding is performed by the 3 layer BID wrap. The plans call for two, I installed three.

When the entire structure had cured, I was impressed at the apparent "hardness" of the installation. If you recall from the video when JD is tapping on the inside of the wheel well, it almost sounded like a metal component. This one sounds just like that, even more so.

6 Feb 2005:Fuel Tanks Closed

The fuel tanks are again closed. This is a major milestone.

1) Note the small round hole to the right. This is for a Centroid Fuel Probe. Note also the plywood on the left. This gets 3 layers of BID on the back, and 4 on the front. This is where the hydraulic lines will connect. The mounting bracket for the Up-Lock switch will be glassed in right in front of the "U" cutout.

2) The metal plate (on the left) is the fuel sender mount plate (on the insides of the tank). The two holes toward the right at the top and bottom, allow fuel to slosh into this new compartment. Don't forget these, or you may not be able to use all the fuel in the forward part of the strake, and you won't be able to fill the forward part of the strake, as there will be a big air bubble trapped.

3 & 4) Both sides are fully laid up. Note that I used 3 layers of BID all the way around. The piece of plywood in the strut opening is there to hold the "U" in its correct position while glassing the insert.

5) Wheel well completed.

For some reason a couple photos I took didn't turn out. Of particular interest was hooking the vacuum cleaner up to the inserts to pull epoxy into any voids (as per plans).

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