dle's Oz Build

[Esser]

David, you may have to enlarge the bolt access hole on your rudder. Before you cover do a dry run of trying to bolt the rudder to the tail through that slot. I think it would be better to enlarge before covering

[David47]

Thanks Josh, you're right. Yes, the slots aren't large enough to even get the bolts in. I've still got to cut two vertical slots and then do a trial fit up. Btw, you're coming on nicely with your build. Been following for quite some time.

[Esser]

Thanks! Nice to see you progressing too. It's been a slow burn over the years for sure. Guys like Scott Noble and Ross have started after me and have many hours flying but it's slowly ticking down. I'm painting the struts and some misc. stuff on Thursday and then hopefully next week I will get the wings on.

[rosslr]

Yes, but we didnt make a major career change in the middle of it all Josh and embark on major training! I think you are making remarkable progress gien your moves and changes! Not long now!

cheers

r

[David47]

It might be a slow burn for you, but you're juggling job changes, major moves which take some time to aclimatise so not surprising. I'm semi retired and have way more time so I can focus. Hope the spray booth works out.

[David47]

Spent the last couple of weekends working on the fuselage door transparencies and then setting up the wing jig and starting the build of the starboard wing.

I trimmed the door transparencies to the inside line of the door frame cutout, leaving about a 3 to 4 mm gap (.125” to .16”) gap all round. This seems about right as when the “P” seal is attached to the inside of the panel, it'll need some gapping to extrude into when the door is closed. At the moment the trim line is roughed in so I’ll need to clean it up with a fine file. A Dremel with a mini disc cutter is perfect for doing the rough cutting as many other builders on the site have said already. I’ll take time in assembling the door frame to the transparencies because getting the doors to seat and seal properly is, I think, worth any extra effort needed to achieve a good fit. I’ve also been reading other builders threads (Eddie, Josh, John E, Carl) and am aware of some of the issues that come up when drilling brittle plastics. Some builders have referred to Rivnuts being used in lieu of cap nuts for attaching the transparencies. I thought Rivnuts were a commercial name for a particular brand of rivet, so not quite sure what I’m missing. At the moment, I haven’t decided whether to use the s/steel screws and cap nuts supplied with the kit or try something different. Still thinking that through.

Although there are still areas on the fuselage still to complete, I’ve decided to take a break from that for a while and dive into starting the wing builds. So I set up my jig and measured everything with laser levels etc and had a friend of mine check it before I started building the starboard wing. Right at the beginning I had a major disaster within the first 60 minutes which, without going into detail, cost me in a $ sense for a really stupid decision. I have a work around but it dents the ego a bit when you make such a lousy call, especially as I’ve been in this business 45+ years and should have known better. Anyway, I’ve started the first wing build and it’s proceeding well. Both spar inserts have been cut and located inside the front and rear spars. They slipped in quite nicely without having to remove any material. Both the insert and the spar interiors were alodined first (alodine 1201) using the tennis ball end plug approach before they were installed and then the insert riveted in place in accordance with the manual (excluding rivets in the wing strut fitting no-go zones). Both spars were then internally primed using epoxy primer, again using the tennis ball end plug method. Works well with a lot of tilting, wobbling, shaking, rotating and any other movement that comes to mind at the time.

As an aside, before riveting the rear spar insert in place, I located the 4 ribs within the area of the insert at their respective wing stations and then riveted the inserts in place. This allowed me to slide these ribs on first without having to notch the rib spar hole cutout to allow rivet heads to clear, because its a very close fit. Just saved a bit of work. Finally, primed the drag braces and mating fittings and started to rivet them in place. Used a silicon compound as a barrier material at the fitting to spar faying surface. It was good to stand back at the end of each day and see a good result .... with one exception.

[Brandon Petersen]

Good day David! Fantastic you're making progress on the wings....my favorite part! Just curious why the spars say bottom but are facing up?

[David47]

Good day David! Fantastic you're making progress on the wings....my favorite part! Just curious why the spars say bottom but are facing up?

Hey Brandon, yep started the first wing build. I agree, it's probably more satisfying doing the wings because you build them from the ground up. Having said that, I'm more than comfortable to have the fuselage assembly prewelded by aircraft quality welders.

Why do the spars say bottom but are facing up ?. "I come from a land down under" - everything is upside down to us .. !. No, real reason is I hadn't removed some of the earlier ink markings.

Hope Kitfox have a successful Oshkosh visit.

[Cherrybark]

David, please keep posting photos of your wing build. Brandon did that job for me with the factory "quick build" package. It will be interesting to watch what I missed.

Here is a picture of Rivnuts. They are a type of rivet but the hollow interior is threaded. The special rivet gun has an assortment of "bolts" that screw into various size rivets. Squeeze the gun and the rivet expands to lock into place. The rivnut and machine screw are not exposed on the inside of the airframe - giving a neater appearance. Downside - rivnuts can sometimes spin in place and how do you drill out something that spins? I used rivnuts because I already had the tool. Otherwise I wouldn't have hesitated to use thru bolts and castle nuts.

https://www.amazon.com/Sunlite-Alloy.../dp/B0012K7LUO

[David47]

Carl, yep will keep posting photos of the wing build. And thanks for the info on the Rivnuts. Looking at the pictures from the link, they do look vaguely familiar now.