Building tips and hints

[HighWing]

Not a must have, but without a doubt the most frequently used tool I own is the expander wheel from Eastwood. It mounts on a typical bench grinder motor. It is very useful for deburring outside edges on tubing, fittings or sheet metal. I will also use it to debur holes in steel. The bands last almost forever and the older they are, the finer the finish on the metal. I've had mine for almost thirty years. Vhttp://www.eastwood.com/expander-wheel.html

[jtpitkin06]

Aileron control rod protection

There are a few reports of seat pans cracking at the front lip. To prevent the seat from dropping and possibly interfering with the aileron push rod many builders install wood supports. The supports are sized to just touch the bottom of the seat pan. By bonding to the frame instead of the seat pan, control rod clearance can be checked when making rigging changes.

I installed supports on both sides of the control rod and on both left and right seats. The supports take most of the pressure off the front lip of the seat pan which should prevent cracking.

Even if the seat breaks, it will not contact the control rod.


John Pitkin
Greenville, Texas

[jtpitkin06]

Wire Chase

Feeding wires from the instrument panel to the aft fuselage is a challenge. There is very little room in the center cockpit tunnel with few places to tie anything. Make a chase to keep the wires safely away from control cables and levers.

A sturdy and inexpensive chase is made from thin wall 1 ¼ inch pvc pipe. Make V cuts in the pipe where you needed to make turns leaving a small PVC “hinge”. The hinge keeps the pipe pieces aligned. The best way to close and bond the joints is to use 2 inch Polyfiber tape and glue it down with Polytack. The bond works almost instantly and it is hard as a baseball bat in about 15 minutes.

The 1 ¼ inch pipe has room for lots of wires and coax with room to spare. The inside is smooth without ridges so wires pass though with ease.

Make oval shaped openings in the pipe where wires need to break out of the bundle.


It's best to run the chase on the left side of the tunnel. You will need to dip down a bit to clear the seat pan and then com back up to just left of the rudder cable sheaves.


John Pitkin
Greenville, Texas

Here's the chase before installation. This one has five joints to snake around frame tubing. The opening int the pipe is for the trim control wiring.

[jtpitkin06]

1 X 19 SS cable.

When routing Stainless steel cable though eyelets and guides the ends have a tendency to fray. Stop the fraying with a few drops of super glue on the end to keep the individual wires in place. Wipe the end after you apply the glue to smooth the wires.

To cover the ends of wires to guard against "meat hooks" use heat shrink tubing. But what do you do if you already have a ferrule crimped in place? A simple solution is to coat the exposed wire end with hot melt glue. It forms a nice smooth coating that can be molded when it cools a bit. Or simply heat the glue witha heat gun to smooth out any strings or blobs.

[Dick B in KY]

This is in reply to Jbonewitz suggestion on locating the exhaust cutout in lower cowling. I just tried his method on my SuperSport and it works perfectly for locating the exhaust pipe hole location. Everything works as advertised and is a very simple process. Thanks for the info.

Dick B

[DesertFox4]

Thanks to a suggestion from Dick B in KY , I just made the "Building tips and hints" a "Sticky" so it can easily be found now at the top of the General discussion page.
No need to use the search feature now if a new post hasn't been added under this subject heading in a few days.
Thanks to all who contribute their experiences so others may enjoy their builds and finished aircraft even more.

[DanB]

As I was setting up my garage I was building a peg hole cabinet and landed on an idea to make rather simple shelves like this... http://www.azshowersolutions.com/Shop3.html
Dan

[MotReklaw]

Thanks to a suggestion from Dick B in KY , I just made the "Building tips and hints" a "Sticky" so it can easily be found now at the top of the General discussion page.

Thanks for that. I have a little problem navigating on this link. So much info here.

TW

[szicree]

So today I was running some epoxy primer through the insides of my drag/anti-drag tubes using the same animal syringes that I use for Hysol application. I took the syringe from its unopened package and squirted primer into one end of the tube and caught the runoff in a cup at the other end. I immediately noticed that the primer wasn't wetting out the surface very well but didn't think much of it. When I was done with the tubes I filled my paint gun with the runoff so that I could put a coat of primer on the brackets that attach the tubes to the spars. As soon as I began spraying I got the worst case of fisheyes I'd ever seen. My first thought was water in my compressor as I had been running the drill most of the morning. I drained the tank and still no joy. Well, I finally came to my senses and realized that the syringe had some sort of lube in it and that this had contaminated the whole enterprise. I cleaned things up, mixed another batch of primer and this time everything worked just fine. Bottom line is that those syringes need to be CLEANED before using, especially for something as critical as the glue that holds the wings together .

[DanB]

Good tip John,
Another one that a few of us in the Phx area have used for a wire chase is the 1" drip irrigation hose. It is usually black with a blue stripe, very light and quite flexible.