Project 5 build thread

[alexM]

Alex, when you enlarge any holes in acrylic you must be just as careful as when you drilled the original hole. Always use a bit designed to drill acrylic. I have heard step drills work ok, but I am leery about them. I cracked a hole that I was enlarging by 1/32" in my acrylic bubble door. I thought removing only 1/16" per side was no big deal, but the standard drill grabbed immediately and I heard that dreadful "tink" sound. Fortunately the crack went to the outside edge a short distance away and has not caused any problems for 11 years now and is nearly invisible. Never relax your care and vigilance when working with acrylic.

You're absolutely right Jim, there's no such thing as being overly cautious when it comes to acrylic. Ironically, the only crack I have so far happened when I was drilling with the 1/8" acrylic bit. I would never have even considered using a step drill if it weren't for Nate telling me he used one and it worked great.

I can say that when I bored the big holes over the wing spar bolt and pin locations (where I got a small crack using the 1/8" acrylic bit), I just went to town with a step drill like I knew what I was doing. The first bit I used had rather large "steps" and as you can imagine it grabbed suddenly at each step. I will say I must have been very lucky to not hear that cracking sound you refer to. After a bit of that I dug in my assortment of step drills for one that has very small graduations between steps and it worked great.

The majority of holes that I'm up-sizing will be using the 1/4" acrylic bit I obtained from Kitfox, and I'll be chamfering all those holes as well.

[alexM]

This will be familiar ground to many of you. I'm installing my doors. If you didn't catch my last build video (and why would you?), my right side door frame was a bit snug. In the end I realized that it was just barely good enough after grinding down some welds to get it to fit in the hole. I dropped the frames off at my local powder coating shop (fantastic work, five stars highly recommended: J&D Powder Coating in Tacoma, WA. The guy was a JAL instructor pilot for many years. Having airplane parts come through his shop makes his day. When I came to pick my parts up this time he had them in his office!).

Anyway, my door frames are textured satin black to match my instrument panel. My belt may not match my shoes but I've got the important stuff covered.

Early in my door fitting "experience" I realized I had polycarbonate skins instead of acrylic bubble doors. I resolved that tragedy by ordering acrylic bubble doors. I erroneously thought I needed clear doors, but after ordering I discovered that my windshield/skylight was light smoke. While ordering a fresh batch of Skybolt "Camloc" fasteners I inquired to see if I could change my order to light smoke. At first I was told it would add 1-2 months to my order (I said "skip that, keep the clear"). But then Heather was able to not only get my order changed to light smoke, but was able to get them on my door step the day I got home from work. Awesome effort from Team Kitfox!

What better way to celebrate fresh powder coating and brand new acrylic than by picking up a drill and proceeding to f** the whole thing up, am I right? Well it has been a long two days but my right side door is installed. I figured if I could get that one to fit, then the left one should be easy (knock on my Scottish head). Because I had the polycarbonate skins which fit the door openings pretty dang well, I decided to install them on the frames, fit the new acrylic piece over the top and get to drilling and cutting. Definitely faster than staring from scratch but not flawless. At least I did it so that I just had to remove excess instead of wishing I had an extra acrylic window to work with.

Rivnuts
I'm going straight to hell when I die (not that it was in question). No secret that in my engineering career I learned to loathe these things. "Hey can you come take a look at this?" is one of those things an engineer hates to hear, and the number of times it was because of a spun Rivnut ranks right up there. Since the acrylic doors are held together with what amounts to zero torque I decided to take a gamble and use them. Two of them didn't make me happy. I drilled them out the same way you would drill out a pop rivet, and left the offending carcass to live eternity inside my door frame. Shh, don't tell anyone.
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Today I tackled the project of installing the hinges and fitting the door to the opening. Also installing the aluminum closeout that fills the gap between the butt rib and the cabin structure. I tried my idea (validated by Nate Ashton) of not notching out the closeout, but back drilling the closeout after drilling the upper cabin tabs for the hinges. To do that I needed to remove the windshield/skylight. Done. I needed to open up the holes along the butt ribs and finish sanding the edges anyway.
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I messed something up along the way (off half a hole here for reasons I can't understand) but I recovered quickly and have my path forward. I'll begin tomorrow morning by doing a final sand and contour of the acrylic piece, then installing the P-seal before proceeding to the left door.

I just did some research on installing the Skybolt "camloc" fasteners which I need for my turtle deck and boot cowl. I'm hoping to get the left door completed tomorrow (including the gas strut for both sides), and then begin to rig my flaperons.

I need to backtrack and create the trim line to cut my glareshield to. Then I'll either install the fake suede or do bed liner on that piece (50/50 at this point), and install my red LED strip under the lip.

[Geek]

............Rivnuts
I'm going straight to hell when I die (not that it was in question). No secret that in my engineering career I learned to loathe these things. "Hey can you come take a look at this?" is one of those things an engineer hates to hear, and the number of times it was because of a spun Rivnut ranks right up there. Since the acrylic doors are held together with what amounts to zero torque I decided to take a gamble and use them. Two of them didn't make me happy. I drilled them out the same way you would drill out a pop rivet, and left the offending carcass to live eternity inside my door frame. Shh, don't tell anyone.

The Rivnuts god is paying you back for all that smack you have laid on his fine creation. If you had been nicer that wouldn't have happened!!!

I just did some research on installing the Skybolt "camloc" fasteners which I need for my turtle deck and boot cowl. I'm hoping to get the left door completed tomorrow (including the gas strut for both sides), and then begin to rig my flaperons.

Funny story here.... You know those jigs you use to rig the flaperons. I loaned mine to a 'guy' but never heard whether or not he got them or not. Literally 6 months after I had mailed them, my fine postal lady stopped by and handed me the box. Told me they had been found somewhere in the post office and she had recognized my address on the return so she dropped them off. Ya want to borrow them?

Geek

[alexM]

^Ha! Yes I do! This whole time I thought I had a dyslexic UPS driver who delivered them to the wrong address.

[Eric Page]

...6 months after I had mailed them, my fine postal lady stopped by and handed me the box. Told me they had been found somewhere in the post office and she had recognized my address on the return so she dropped them off. Ya want to borrow them?

The real question is, did she offer you a refund on the postage?

When you get those back from that 'guy' be sure to hold onto them. The other local 'guy' is going to need them eventually...

[Geek]

^Ha! Yes I do! This whole time I thought I had a dyslexic UPS driver who delivered them to the wrong address.

OK. Now if I can find them. I know they're in a box - just which storage unit. The hunt is on.

The real question is, did she offer you a refund on the postage?

When you get those back from that 'guy' be sure to hold onto them. The other local 'guy' is going to need them eventually...

Yup. No problem Eric. That other guy is sketchy but most likely won't mess them up too badly. I mean heck - he doesn't even like a good rivnut!

[alexM]

A couple of weeks of getting as much done as I could. So many "oops, forgot about that detail" things popped up that it's not worth keeping track. Suffice it to say many smaller tasks were completed to get to these pictures including, dare I say, cleaning up my hangar. I had a neighbor from across the way (beautiful RV-9 in his hangar), ask to borrow some tools. After I set him up I realized he was looking around my hangar as if he was in a slaughterhouse (which wasn't a stretch). I had spent the past two weeks focused on the plane and not the detritus on the floor, and that was quite an accumulation.
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Specifically today I taught myself how to do Camlocs (Skybolt brand purchased through Kitfox, totally the way to go). I'm quite sure I made every mistake possible when installing them but they still came out great. My acrylic bubble doors are installed and operating, my glare shield is covered in fuzzy stuff and installed, my turtle deck is installed (mostly). By tomorrow at this time I will have completed the body and fender work on my Hoerner wingtips, specifically the trailing edges.

After installing the two Camlocs on each side of the boot cowl I went with nutplates on my A pillars. I installed two of the single lug type on each side where reaching the rivets would be difficult. Today I was countersinking and squeezing rivets like never before. Long story short, I screwed up and used quite a bit of my #8 hardware intended for my windshield/skylight on my doors (oops). I have multiple orders placed with Kitfox, McMaster Carr and Aircraft Spruce which should result in a flurry of hardware installation when I return on May 1.

I've still got all day tomorrow to move the ball forward, which I intend to do.

[airlina]

Looking fantastic Alex, gonna be one unique Kitfox, and I won't say 90% done with 90% to go....looks more like a 90%-10% deal. great job, Bruce N199CL