Skip to main content

Now where did I put that thing...?

 What do you think, is 15 months long enough to go without an update? Yeah, I think so too.

  Let's get right into the meat of it then. Now where did I leave off... -Rummages through old posts. Sounds of scrap tubing bouncing off the floor accompany muffled curses-

AHA! Found it. We were waiting to finish weld the fuselage. I had a good review from my Tech councilor in April of 2021 and started in on finish-welding the fuselage. I started at the tailpost and worked forward, spiraling around the fuselage as I welded each tubing cluster. I made up a rotisserie of sorts to allow me to turn the fuselage for better access to all sides of each weld.

The rotisserie consisted of two 2x4 stands with a hole drilled in an end. This hole accepted a piece of tubing on which the fuselage could rotate. This is probably one of those "a picture is worth 1000 words" deals, so here ya go. The front pivot is just some gas pipe bolted to a plywood plate. The plywood is held on the fuselage with plumbers strap and screws.

 


One of the worst clusters: 6 tubes.
The tail pivot is a T of scrap tubing clamped to the tailpost with a couple blocks. It took a little adjusting to get the pivots aligned with the fuselage correctly so it was balanced enough to stay in whatever position I spun it. I ended up adding a clamp to the forward support to add some friction and keep the fuselage from spinning unexpectedly.
After doing the first couple clusters I estimated it took about 1hr to fully weld each cluster. There are about 40 clusters in the fuselage, so I figured that meant finish-welding should take about 40 hrs. Looking back on my logbook now, it seems I only spent about 25 hours finish-welding, so it went way faster than I expected!

But wait, there's more! Since I had the control stick welded up, I figured it best to make progress on the rest of the control stick assembly. I re-re-re welded the bushing onto the control stick
torque tube and finally got it right this time. All that welding in one place put a bit of a bend into the torque tube, so I had to spend some time with the torch heating and bending to get the bow out. The aft end of the torque tube slips into a tube welded onto the front of the seat. That went in next. This caused the front of the seat to warp, just like the torque tube had, so a little time with the torch was necessary to relax it back out and get everything in line again. With all of this done the torque tube received a pair of stop-rings to capture the rear pivot. The forward stop-ring is welded on and the rear one is held with a bolt so the torque tube can be removed if necessary. This bolt doubles as a stop so you can't push the stick too far left and right. A little C-shaped bracket will eventually be welded to the seat frame to capture this bolt.

While I was working on the front of the seat, I decided to weld up the rest of the seat-base. This consisted of two little "L"s of tubing mitred together. Quick and easy.


A couple other little things got done like making the engine-mount bushings for the firewall and welding caps on the forward ends of the longerons.

That catches us up to the beginning of 2022. That's all the pictures I took, so the next post will catch up to current progress. Gotta go snap some photos!

 

 

 

Total time: 613.55hr

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Drag wires

Progress on the airplane has been very limited as of late. It has, however, been made. After a long episode of researching and calculating I have found drag wires.   Not the drag wires the plans call for, but still. The plans want 1050 alloy steel wire to be threaded with a #6-40 thread and retained with what are essentially spoke-nipples from motorcycles wheels. The aircraft rated nipples are about $7 each and I need 24 of them. Spoke nipples are 20 to 50 cents each. We'll, I wasn't going to spend $170 on bolts, but $12 seemed reasonable, so I ordered a bunch of spoke nipples. I had intended to match the thread of the nipples with my drag wire stock, but they are just irregular enough that I couldn't find a thread that matched and it seemed like sending wires out to have the correct thread rolled on wouldn't be worth the effort. So, despite having bought my spoke nipples, I abandoned the idea of using them. Enter the Baby Great Lakes. I researched drag wires and alt...
2 comments
Read more

Where to start?

So, where does one start when building an airplane?   The answer changes from person to person. The kernel of inspiration to build an airplane was there, as I mentioned in the last post, from the time and effort it took to build the Spirit. But what plane? I looked at the trusty Pietenpol, but the size of the cockpits and the useful load left me wanting for something more. I looked at the Double Eagle and the Airbike, but my girlfriend didn't like how open they were. Finally, I made a list of what I thought I wanted in an airplane, reproduced here.  -High wing monoplane (biplanes mean building 4 wings)  -Taildragger w/tailwheel  -Fabric wings and stab.  -Aluminum tube or wood construction, maybe steel  -Inexpensive to build  -Inexpensive to operate  -Single carb engine.  -Aircooled?  -Two seats  -Mostly enclosed cockpit (not a breezy)  -minimal systems  -AOA/reserve lift guage  -Amphibious a plus ...
2 comments
Read more

Fittings. How fitting.

  Not much has happened on the Ace this year. The winter was long and spring has been very cold, so I spent a long time waiting for the garage to warm up. Now that there's a little heat down there I've been making some headway on the next step of my wing build: fittings. I copied the parts off the plans into CAD and then printed them onto cardstock to use as patterns when laying fittings out on the steel stock.    First I tackled the brackets that will hold the pulleys for the aileron cables. I have a lot of extra material in case I had to remake these. The next step was to bend up my fittings. There is one fitting that mounts to the forward side of the strut which gets bent to a 90° angle. The fitting which mounts to the aft side of the spar gets bent at about an 85° angle. I forget the exact number, but don't feel like looking it up at the moment. Next I cut out the aileron control horns. My Harbor Freight porta-band chucked into my vice works well for cutting th...
Post a Comment
Read more