Saturday, March 31, 2018

Section: 20
Hours: 5

Today I started the outboard bottom wing skin riveting.

Thursday, March 29, 2018

Section: 20
Hours: 5

I continued riveting the bottom skin, working from the center to the ends of the panel. It was especially difficult reaching between the closely spaced ribs at the wing root.

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Section: 20
Hours: 5

I started riveting the bottom wing skins- fun job... First I tried with the wing laid flat on my work tables, but I could not reach far enough to get the rivets at the trailing edge. Then I put the wing back in the wing stand and from a kneeling position I could make the reach. The rubber mat on the floor helped out the knees. This is one of the more challenging riveting jobs I've done so far so it is going rather slowly.

Monday, March 19, 2018

Section: 20
Hours: 4

Today I worked on getting the bottom wing skins ready for installation, including riveting on nut plates to the access panel cutouts.

Monday, March 12, 2018

Section: 24
Hours 5

The rib that is inserted in the fiberglass wing tips must be reversed to make the hinge pins accessible. Also, the top flange has to be modified to accommodate the overlap with the hinge. I cut off a section of the flange and riveted on an offset flange as shown below.

Here are the 1/8 inch spacers and the new flange angle. I dimpled the rib and counter sank the top spacer. The new flange angle is also offset by the thickness of the hinge from the rest of the rib flange.



Section: smoke tank
Hours: 1

I am looking forward to formation flying with the RV-14. Of course you need a smoke oil system if you are serious about formation flying. I ordered a smoke oil tank from Merv at smoke system helper I figured it would take several weeks to build and ship out, but it appeared on my door step today less than a week after ordering it! The kit seems very complete including plumbing and wiring supplies.


Sunday, March 11, 2018

Section: 24
Hours: 5

I decided to attach the wing tips using the hinge method. The advantages of this method are that it makes it easy to detach the wing tips for inspection and maintenance. I also like the cleaner look. The downside is that it is a lot of work to drill all the holes, detach the flange and rivet it all together. Here is an article detailing the method: wing tip hinges and here: attaching wingtips


Saturday, March 10, 2018

Section: OP-52A
Hours: 2

When I pulled out the wing light kits I discovered they were missing the hardware bags. Van's was very responsive and quickly shipped the missing hardware bags for the wing lights. Today I assembled the brackets to the lights.

Section: 19
Hours: 3

I fit the second wing tip and drilled holes. In addition to the strap to pull the tip into the leading edge I used duct tap to pull the fiberglass into the wing to close the gaps before drilling and clecoing.
 So far I'm satisfied with the trailing edge alignment.

Friday, March 9, 2018

Section: 19
Hours: 5

I am installing Flyleds tip lights so the wing wire runs have to be modified from the standard harness. My initial plan was to install a 2 pair 22ga shielded line and use the ground provided with the standard harness. That is what is shown in this post. Later I discovered that would not be sufficient and pulled it out and installed a 3 pair 18ga shielded line (see future post).

I discovered that the best way to handle shielded wiring termination is with solder and seal connectors. You strip the insulation back on the end of your cable to expose about 1/4 inch of shielding. Then you slip the connector over and slide a ground wire in and shrink the assembly using the heat gun. The solder melts and creates the connection between the shield and ground wire. This process is demonstrated on Stein Air's web site: solder sleeves

Here is the connector plug at the wing tip for the FlyLed lights. (note: I change this out later- don't wire it up this way!)

I tried out some wire lacing to bundle up the wiring for the aileron servo.
The wires provided that run back from the aileron servo to the aileron trim were a little short but I arranged them the best I could and applied some lacing to hold it together.

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Section: 56
Hours: 6

The installation kit for the Garmin autopilot servos has a couple aluminum tubes that must be threaded on both ends to accept threaded bearings. I started out using a tap from my inexpensive (cheap) Harbor Freight tap and die set and had a hard time cutting threads to the required depth. I ordered a more expensive tap and the job became much easier. Good quality HSS tools make a huge difference for jobs like this.
 I used the drill press for this tap job. I chucked up the aluminum tubing in the drill and made a fixture to hold the tap chuck on the bed of the drill press.
 Bottom side of the tap chuck fixture.
 Here are the finished connecting rods with the better quality tap from Vermont tools.