Project 5 build thread

[Eric Page]

Whew! It's got to feel good to have that big step done.

[alexM]

Whew! It's got to feel good to have that big step done.

Yes, huge relief. I'm sure it's all down hill from here.

[Eric Page]

Oh, yeah. The rest of the build is, "snap tab A into slot B."

[jiott]

Alex, I greatly admire your skill and craftsmanship in fabricating that piece of tooling.
I also want to encourage others who may be watching all this and freaking out because they have not the means to build such a jig. The instructions in the build manual work just fine if followed carefully and thousands of us have done it that way with fine results.
Alex' offer to loan out his jig is a very fine gesture and maybe several will take advantage of it.

[alexM]

Alex, I greatly admire your skill and craftsmanship in fabricating that piece of tooling.
I also want to encourage others who may be watching all this and freaking out because they have not the means to build such a jig. The instructions in the build manual work just fine if followed carefully and thousands of us have done it that way with fine results.
Alex' offer to loan out his jig is a very fine gesture and maybe several will take advantage of it.

Thanks for pointing that out Jim. Because of the nature of amateur video editing I ended up cutting out a piece where I shared my discussion with airport neighbor Nate Ashton. He said that when you pilot the hole and use a rat tail file, the steel sleeve in the carry through keeps you from oversizing the hole. It would have to be done carefully but as you say, it's been done thousands of times buy other builders.

I've already had a few inquiries about the fixtures. I'm shipping them to a forum member in Canada next week.

[efwd]

I discovered that a file is archaic once I put the dremel to work. Once I got the primary hole drilled I was able to fit the dremel bit in and it was quick and painless. I used the side cutting drill bit that came with my Dremel. Just hold the tool vertical as to not do metal work inside the through hole.

[Jerrytex]

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...1?ie=UTF8&th=1


This is what I used and it is surprisingly similar to what Brandon used on a you tube video where he was rigging a wing.

[alexM]

^ Very interesting use of a center drill, but likely works superbly. I received my most recent order from McMaster Carr which had a 0.3125" drill blank, a short flute 5/16" drill and a fresh 19/64" drill - all for the benefit of those who borrow my drill jigs.

My better half recently bought a "fixer upper" home a 3 hour drive from home which is putting a bind in my build schedule. She's very supportive of my flying/building activities so it's only fair that I help where ever she needs me.

I'm not dead in the water however. I ordered the book "Aircraft Wiring Guide" by Marc Ausman, and manage to read it cover to cover over the weekend while I was holding down a comfortable chair. Prior to ordering it I read some less favorable reviews but I ordered it anyway and I'm glad I did. It had the perfect content that I needed to read at this stage of my build, and it answered a ton of questions including some I didn't know I would eventually ask.

Then as recently as last night I perused this forum in the avionics section where I learned a lot more information specific to the Kitfox. I had been planning on a connector at the wing roots "just in case" I need to remove wings at some point, but now I will just have a decent service loop and not look back. I don't plan on even folding my wings unless absolutely necessary.

I'm looking forward to getting my plane back on its gear so I can test fit all my avionics and wire harnesses and get an idea of where they'll eventually be located. That will allow me to estimate the amount of wiring I need, connectors, terminal strips, fuses/circuit breakers etc.

Making chips
I did manage a couple of build sessions at the hangar. Oh, I am so looking forward to bringing parts back home because I get WAY more building done that way. What I did manage to do was get out my steel spar doublers which were only partially fabricated by the previous builder. He did do a good job of laying out the hole pattern for the outer pieces and drilling up the main hole doing through them. I reamed out the holes, then I used my Sawzall to cut as spar stub off my scrap wings. I clamped pairs of inner/outer doublers to the spar stub and used my drill press to drill up the 3/32" holes at the outboard end of the doublers. I removed the inside doubler and then drilled up the rest of the 7 holes per doubler, using Clecos as I went, just as the manual describes.
Prior to drilling I noticed that the curvature of the doublers was smaller than the diameter of the spar tube, so I used an arbor press to flatten them just enough so they matched the spar contour. I was worried about flattening them out too much, and did just that on an extra scrap doubler before I got the hang of it. I probably spent an hour on the first pair of doublers and then an hour for all the rest of them combined.

I still need to put corner radii on all the pieces but I have deburred everything. I'll have to pull the wings off to clamp, drill, deburr (again), prep and finally Hysol (with micro balloons) and rivet them in place. Once that is done I'll have to re-introduce the spars to the cabin structure to see how much more I have to file the spar carry through tubes to fit over the doublers.

Prior to pulling the wings I needed to do one more task, which was to drill two holes through each of the lift strut attach fittings into the wing spars and secure with two Clecos in each fitting. Of course I checked all my rigging to make sure I still had the proper dihedral and washout (the sweep ship sailed when I drilled up the roots of the spars, but it's still at zero degrees). So now at least I know I should be able to remove my wings and know that putting them back on will be straight forward. I hope.

Then I will need to cut the relief notches in the rear spars which allow the wings to fold. My paper templates are missing even though I have every other one. I thought about making a template from the notches on my scrap wings but it looks to me that they removed way too much material near the drilled holes, leaving scant edge margin to the 5/16" holes in the spars.

After I get the steel doublers in and the wings fit back to the fuselage I can locate and bond my #1 ribs. Once that is done I can bring large pieces back home and get some real work done.

[rv9ralph]

Another great resource on wiring our aircraft is at www.aeroelectric.com. The site is a little old school but a wealth of information provided by Bob Knuckles. His book "AeroElectric Connection" is a valuable resource to have on your shelf.

Bob is also a constant contributor to the AeroElectric List at Matronics.com. Some members of this forum are regulars there.

Ralph

[Eric Page]

Bob's book, The AeroElectric Connection, can be downloaded in PDF format here for free.

His electrical architecture drawings are available in DWG format here, or in PDF format here.