The fuselage has arrived - 10 hours

The fuselage has arrived. I ordered it Sept 6th and came just a few days after the original "Crate Date".  Its not light, and it wasn't easy to move. But with four guys we managed to get it into the garage. Ahhh, so exciting. Lots of parts I recognize and a huge bag of hardware!
Oh, did I mention how well packed everything is? Top notch Vans...Top notch! I took a couple of hours in the evenings to work on the inventory. About 10 hours in all to sort it all out.
 



 

Private Pilots License is Completed!

Well, admittedly I've been very quiet on the blog.  I've had my nose buried in books and in studying to complete my license. So rather than bore you withe the everyday particulars here is the summary of my experience:

I managed to complete my private pilots license at the end of May 2018. It’s been quite a journey, trying to fill my head with all that knowledge is not an easy task anymore now that I’m older. I can definitely tell I had to work much harder to memorize things.

I started the license back in about July 2016. I was finishing up the wing build and I was trying to figure out if I order the fuselage, or do I work on my license. I was coming up on a long weekend that was going to take me out of town and i knew that I would have lots of time on my hands. So i decided to sign up for online ground school and they provided me with a copy of the Aviation Textbook, “From the Ground Up”.
Fortunate for me the text book arrived just in time for me to leave. So i spend the entire long weekend reading. After that I dabbled in the ground school but never really gave it 100% effort. Soon winter was approaching and I know I needed buckle down. And that’s exactly what I did. By January I was halfway complete in the course (Helped by two full weeks holidays over Christmas). By May I was 80% complete.

At that point I figured it was a good time to start actually flying. At first I was booking two days a week for flying. Wednesday mornings and Saturday Mornings. Things went really well through the summer as the weather was often good. August 1, 2017 I wrote and passed my written PPL exam. August 29, 2017 was my first solo. It went by so quick that I barely remember it. The take off was nice, so was the circuit and final approach. But I bounced it a little on the landing. Not bad, but not perfect. After that I continued at that pace into fall but as soon as November hit, the weather was awful. Too poor visibility, too cold, wind shear, there was always something that made it not safe for flying. At one point over the Christmas holidays I had 20 bookings in a row that were cancelled. Finally February brought more favorable weather which allowed me to finally get back in the air and by March 7, I completed my short solo cross country. I took 4 weeks in there to go on a family vacation so it was a perfect time to study for the flight test.

May 7th I took my private pilot flight test and passed. All went pretty well, there’s a few things that I could have done better. The examiner hit me with a few tough questions. In the end I did ok, although my spiral dive recovery was a bit abrupt. I should have separated the recovery into three separate maneuvers (Power off, roll wings level, ease out of the dive) as I kind of blended the last two. I know this....when you screw up on something on your flight exam.....you will never forget it and never do it again.

Unfortunately I just had a few flights that I needed to complete in order to finish and get my license. The long cross country solo and I have 0.8 hours under the hood to finish. So after one particularly great weather weekend, I had knocked off the solo. And couple days later I had the 0.8 under the hood complete. May 25th I was a pilot!!

The Timberhawk kids plane

One idea that I have bounced around for a while was the idea of a kids plane at the Airshow. A good majority of planes in Canada is look, but don't touch. I wanted something really fun for them. I met Dina Jammaz from Elevate Aviation and she thought it was an awesome idea and really encouraged me to build the plane. She has some contacts with Volvo of Edmonton and they were more than happy to fund the project. So spent the Christmas break in 2017 designing approximately half-scale replica of a P-40 Warhawk.

Most important aspect of the design was to ensure that kids fit into the plane. The only way I can ensure that happens is to get a profile view of the target audience. Fortunately my two kids are ages 6 and 9 so this works perfect. I had them pose in a sitting position and then took pictures. I was then able to transfer their outlines into AutoCAD and then I can begin the task of drawings the aircraft around them.



Now that I had the right profile, I could then work out the scale and geometry of the aircraft

Now came the very long and difficult process to turn the 2D sketches into a 3D design. After about 3 weeks of work the design began to take shape. I design the pieces similar to how the wood dinosaur puzzles go together. Just an assortment of 2D shapes that fit together to make a 3D piece.


























Once I was satisfied with the design, I had to ensure that it was actually going to work. Often when designing in 2 dimensions its hard to determine how things will fit together until you actually begin to build. The easiest way I could verify the design was to digitally build the aircraft. It only took about a weeks worth of time to transform the design into 3D. With a few modifications to the design, I could prove that it will work and look great.



My father used to paint signs when I was young. I remember the technique he used, drawing the designs in pencil, and then tracing them onto the boards and hand painting everything. I still have some of his tools. In particular the pounce wheel. This was a common tool/method used to transfer designs from large pieces of paper onto virtually any media.

The pounce wheel has small spikes on it that perforate the paper. Once all of the lines are traced out with the perforations, chalk is tapped over the paper and the outline is left behind. I printed an outline of each piece on the plotter and then spent the time tracing it all with the wheel.

Using black carpenters chalk, I transferred the pieces to the plywood.

I now have a perfect outline to work from.

The first two pieces are cut and ready for final shaping. Fortunately I had lots of help from everyone at the Edmonton Homebuilt Aircraft Association and EAA Chapter 30. Lots and lots of hours when into cutting all of the pieces and shaping them. 
 


After a couple of weeks we managed to have nearly all the pieces rough-cut and ready for assembly.

I soon realized that working only Monday evenings with the group, we would never reach the deadline. So I took the project home and began assembling. One of the items that I really wanted was a cool bolstered seat. I wanted the cockpit to be like a race car. So it would really stick out in their minds. I began working away on a wood seat. Mostly because I couldn't seem to find a kids wood seat to buy.



 Assembly took an incredible amount of work. Its funny how things just slap together in your mind, but in real life. Not the case. Lots of painstaking work and measurements and router jigs were put into good use.

Once I was happy with the geometry I could advance into the more complicated pieces of fabrication.

At this point the EHAA/EAA club found some landing gear off an old homebuilt aircraft that I could use. I can tell you how much work went into getting the gear to work. I even had to consult with a structural engineer to deal with the torsional stresses that the raked gear presented.



The best part of the whole project is when folks would donate their expertise and materials. We had so many parts and labor donated - Welders, a nose cone, and the part kids really like, the instruments.

Picked up some AeroLED's

Managed to pick up some AeroLED’s Navigation/Anti-collision Strobe/Position lights. Pulsar NS and the Suntail. I hooked them up to a 12V battery to test them out and they work perfect. Wow are they bright.
  

Installed wing inspection plates, wings finished - 3 hours

Last step was to complete the wing inspection plates. I had filed all the edges on the inspection plates down to clean the shear marks off, and then chamfered the edges to ensure a good fit with the radius corners of the skin. I ran each through the 3M wheel to finish the edges. I final drilled each screw hole on the drill press. Most important, I polished each hole with the dremel and fine grit sandpaper (lesson learned from the wing tank screw hole to ensure no cracks in the thick material when dimpling). The wings are now ready for storage.

Finished installing the flaps - 3 hours

I had trimmed the outboard wing hinge, and all that was left to do was to deal with the hinge pins.

There are two options to install the hinge pins; 1 - keep the hinge its entire length and place a hole in the aileron hinge bracket, or 2 - Cut the hinge in two and access from the middle. Knowing how difficult it can be to install hinge pins....and it's not always fun. I opted for option #2. However I decided to deviate slightly from the plans following a poplar method of installing a nutplate and small hing piece to hold the pins. I figured out where the best location for the hinge pin to be secured was, and I then removed the required hinge loops.

Bending the hinge pins is really about trial and error. Since I had lots of extra hinge pins from buying extra hinge...I just played with a few different test pieces till I got it right. Next I checked the clearances inside between the flap and brace with the hinge closed. I now have a good idea where to locate the hinge hold piece.


After drilling, countersinking and primer touchup I installed the nutplate. Next, I installed the hinge pin hold pieces with a #6 screw.

Beginning to install the flaps - 5 hours (Actually countless hours)

One of the steps that I did not do was to mark and pre-drill the flap hinge earlier in the build process. I reasoned that if I waited till I had the ailerons and flaps completed that it would make for a better alignment. (Keep in mind that in Canada, we have to leave every piece open for inspection prior to closing). In hindsight, this proved to make the process very much more difficult to get the hinge aligned.

Build Tip for Canadians -The best time to drill the hinge for the flap/wing is to mount the completed and closed aileron to the wing with just the underside of the wing skin clecoed on. Make sure that you haven't dimpled the holes yet on the wing skin that attach the skin to the flap brace. Mounting the flap hinge should be much more easy and precise.

Build Tip - When setting the hinge on the flap, I had placed it according to the 1/4" dimension as noted on the plans. When installing the flap to the wing, there was not much hinge left to mount to the wing. I was just slightly better than the minimum edge distance indicated on the plans, but it could have been better. In retrospect, this 1/4" dimension I used when installing the hing on the flap should be modified so it places the holes closer to the outside edge of the hinge. If I ever build another plane. The dimension I would use is 7/32.


I had temporarily set the flap in place and used a 1/4" thick wood shim and placed it between the flap and aileron. This allowed me to mark the location and ensure the left/right placement of the hinge was correct. After reading the different blogs, I made certain that the flap and hinge was all the way outboard so it didn't interfere at the fuselage (the hinge has some left to right play in it, I made sure the maximum gap was 1/4"..and it's minimum gap was less.).

Once I established the first hole, clecoed it and checked alignment, I began to work my way inboard. Checking, re-clamping, drilling a hole, re-check. repeat process down the line.


I found that using the fan spacer helped immensely.



Admittedly this process actually took me a couple of weeks and I went through a number of hinges. I was not happy with some of my alignments and choose to try again, and again. I wanted it perfect, and frankly hinges were cheap to order from Aircraft Spruce... So why not get it perfect. And in the end I did.