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Thread: John's Build

  1. #281
    Senior Member Dave S's Avatar
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    Default Re: John's Build

    John,

    The folding camlocks are a good deal ......When you go to buy a cabin cover for those overnight trips you will appreciate not having the little wings of the non folding ones poke/wear into your nice cabin cover.
    Dave S
    Kitfox 7 Trigear (Flying since 2009)
    912ULS Warp Drive

    St Paul, MN

  2. #282
    Senior Member jrevens's Avatar
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    Default Re: John's Build

    Quote Originally Posted by Flybyjim View Post
    Is the turtle deck made of acrylic or lexan? Your mod looks very well done and very useful if one needs to get it from the top a lot. How does this work when you need to fold the wings. I only helped one fellow with a model 4 fold his wings and I believe he needed to take the turtle deck off to accomplish the fold.
    Jim,

    It’s Lexan. The entire assembly needs to come off to fold the wings with or without the mod. Also, with the additional close-outs at the flaperon slots, the cover has to be in at least a partially folded position to install or remove it. That is actually not bad, and I’ve gotten used to how to hold it to make it easy. The accessability is wonderful, especially with the taildragger. It’ll be so much easier loading, unloading, securing cargo, etc. As Ken Nougaret noted, it will be nice to not have to set the whole thing down somewhere on the ground to gain that access.

    Dave S.,

    I used the folding wing camlocks only on the 3 rear ones, for 2 reasons, but I hadn’t thought of the cabin cover wear & tear. First of all, I wanted to use the winged units but didn’t particularily like that Kitfox uses the same little mounting tabs all around, and they are oriented so that the wings are like little sails against the wind instead of more streamlined like the side ones, so the folding ones mitigate that a little and look better to me. Secondly, the folded wings don’t touch the skylight when “the door’s open” now, which is good.

    For those who asked, I am going to fly this thing before too long. We’ve had a very mild Winter, but it’s snowing a little today. I’ve got the paperwork stacked up on my desk and have been in contact with a DAR. I’m also going to see if I can get the FAA to look at it instead... around here that would save me about $500, and Ive heard that they are doing some again (they supposedly were “too busy” for a long time). I’m making the little cuffs at the fuselage to wing leading edge now... it’s the last thing before mounting the prop, fuel flow tests, tank calibration, and weight & balance calcs. I’m really curious what the empty weight will be... I don’t expect it to be very light.

    A little additional information - the co-polymer hinge material I used is molded in an “H” pattern, and fits very tightly over the edge of the Lexan. It’s pretty hard to remove even without screws. The outer PVC material is very flexible... I’ve bent it lengthwise over 90 degrees with no real sign of distress. It’s tough stuff. Of course the urethane web is extremely flexible. I decided to extend it over the split strakes to give them a little more stability and to make them be a better “umbrella”. To do that I had to cut away one side of the “H” in that area. I did that with a small hacksaw blade and my little milling machine. It worked out very nicely.

    Thank you to everyone for the comments - I appreciate it very much.
    John Evens
    Arvada, CO
    Kitfox SS7 N27JE
    EAA Lifetime
    Chap. 43 honorary Lifetime

  3. #283

    Join Date
    Feb 2015
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    Port Orange, Fl.
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    Default Re: John's Build

    John,
    As always, incredible idea and workmanship. Did you use anything to seal the inside of the channel of the living hinge and wondering if you remember where you bought it from. I guess you could just include the complete instructions with your Oratex manual

    Brett

  4. #284
    Senior Member jrevens's Avatar
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    Default Re: John's Build

    Brett,

    Thank you. Here's a link to the material I ended up using -

    https://www.jifram.com/living-hinge....yAAEgJ4O_D_BwE

    Jifram Extrusions, Inc. located in Wisconsin. The tooling is H226, and I got the clear of course. I just checked, and they are quoting it in stock, $5 per 6' sections, and no minimum. I got this stuff a long time ago and decided I didn't want to use it after seeing something else that I thought might be better. It was a co-polymer hinge also - acrylic & urethane. It looked good except for one big problem for me... the acrylic was very vulnerable to cracking. Any holes drilled in it for mounting would invariably cause cracking with any flexing at all. Not good. It might have worked by gluing it to the Lexan, but I wanted a more certain (in my mind) method of attachment that was also removable for replacement if necessary.

    This stuff from Jifram worked out real nicely. It mounts very tightly on the turtledeck cover I got, It couldn't be any tighter, and was very hard to push on. A little bit of lubricant would have helped. The little interior ridges are slightly flexible and they fold down and form what is almost certainly a completely water tight seal, but I did mask and run a very tiny bead of silicone sealant down each edge. It sits nice and flat on my unit. I then match drilled through the assembly with an 1/8" drill, and used 4-40 S.S. truss head screws, nylon & stainless steel washers, & nyloc nuts. The back-up stiffeners are 1/2 x 1/2" .063 2024-T3 (Aircraft Spruce). Before I did all that though, I trimmed the hinge to length and end shape, and carefully cut off the lower sections of the hinge where it meets and goes over the strakes, so I basically have a flat hinge out there, mounted over the strakes on the top surface of them only. I hope that makes sense to anyone interested.
    John Evens
    Arvada, CO
    Kitfox SS7 N27JE
    EAA Lifetime
    Chap. 43 honorary Lifetime

  5. #285
    Senior Member efwd's Avatar
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    Default Re: John's Build

    Very good John, thanks. You answered all my questions. I may do that too, it is a very sweet arrangement.
    Eddie

  6. #286

    Join Date
    Feb 2015
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    Port Orange, Fl.
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    Default Re: John's Build

    Makes perfect sense. Thanks again.

    Brett

  7. #287
    Senior Member
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    Nov 2017
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    Bailey, CO
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    Default Re: John's Build

    John,

    Did you use the EAA guys to check out your build? If so, who does it in this area?

    Steve

  8. #288
    Senior Member jrevens's Avatar
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    Default Re: John's Build

    I got a request for some pictures of the headset jacks behind my seats, so I decided to post a couple here. They are made from 0.063 aluminum and are bonded to the tubing with Hysol. The jacks are mounted on insulating washers, so there is no grounding at the jacks themselves as per standard practice. I made matching cover plates with oversized holes. They are held on with small S.S. screws and blind nuts (nutserts). I cut and melted slightly oversized holes in the baggage sack material and sandwiched it between the mounting plates and the cover plates.
    The Velcro mounting ledges that were discussed on another thread are perhaps shown a little better (before covering) here also.
    Attached Images Attached Images
    John Evens
    Arvada, CO
    Kitfox SS7 N27JE
    EAA Lifetime
    Chap. 43 honorary Lifetime

  9. #289
    Senior Member jrevens's Avatar
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    Default Re: John's Build

    I got back this morning from a couple of wonderful days with Paul Leadabrand (Stick & Rudder Aviation) in Greenleaf, Idaho, getting a good feel for the Super Sport. What a great experience it was, and what a nice airplane!! It was just the boost I needed now! As has been said many times before by others, Paul is a really great instructor and I feel so fortunate that he's doing what he's doing now, and also that I could slip into a narrow available slot with the weather cooperating. I'm glad the winds were kicking up a little and I got a good feel for how nicely this airplane handles crosswinds and so much more. Also good to see John and Debra McBean again, as always, as well as a couple of other local Kitfox friends. Just a really great time doing what I love to do. Thank you, Paul! And thank you John and Debra for keeping this great design alive, fresh and well!
    John Evens
    Arvada, CO
    Kitfox SS7 N27JE
    EAA Lifetime
    Chap. 43 honorary Lifetime

  10. #290
    Senior Member efwd's Avatar
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    Default Re: John's Build

    Glad to hear you had a good time. Glad your weather worked out. My first two days (two years ago) with Stick and Rudder, one got rained out. My next trip is April 9 thru 13 for my try for the tail wheel endorsement and BFW. Can't Wait. this time it is suppose to be with Paul. His schedule nearly didn't work out but I was able to switch my vacation and his schedule lightened up enough to allow him to do my instruction. So.... No longer seeking an alternate airplane to fly.

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