skins – PH-MNX

Solstice Sprint

ph-mnx — Fri, 27 Dec 2019 08:33:15 +0000

The last two weeks of 2019 are holidays (or at least I didn’t go to my day-job). This gave me a lot of opportunities to work on the plane between Christmas and New Year.

I focused on tying up all kinds of loose ends and riveting the side skins. The Rudder Pedals are now primed, so I can install them on the Rudder construction. In hind sight I’d better painted them, because now I still need to prevent from messing up the powder-coating.

The main Longerons are riveted to the skin with both the top and side skin with the same rivet. However there are a few “in-between” rivets, that fasten the side skin to the Longeron.

Where there is no top skin (the canopy), the side skin can already be riveted to the Longeron.

The Seat Bulkhead, Baggage Compartment and Front Bulkheads and auxiliary Longerons can all be riveted by one person.

I loosen the bottom skin from the Firewall, so I can apply some polymer kit between the skin and Firewall in order to create a seal.

All sides of the Firewall (including the recess) need to be sealed.

All and all I set over 500 rivets in this week and I tied up most loose ends.

This is the view through the firewall recess.

Time: 5 Hours, Rivets:  54/2 (2019-12-22)

Time: 5 Hours, Rivets: 287/2 (2019-12-23)

Time: 3 Hours, Rivets:   0/0 (2019-12-24)

Time: 2 Hours, Rivets: 134/0 (2019-12-25)

Time: 2 Hours, Rivets: 104/0 (2019-12-26)

Time: 5 Hours, Rivets:  12/0 (2019-12-27)

Video

Dimple Side Skin

ph-mnx — Sun, 08 Dec 2019 09:33:13 +0000

After having primed all the skins, auxiliary longerons and bulkheads, I can start dimpling all these parts.

My favorite weapon for dimpling is the DRDT-2. First up are the holes for the stiffeners.

I draw some lines on the inside of the skin of all the places I should NOT dimple. Mainly because the rivets in these holes are not flush.

There are two hole sizes, so in the forward part, where the engine is mounted, we need a bigger dimple die set.

The places I can’t reach with the DRDT-2, I’ll use the squeezer.

With th soldering iron, I melt the blue vinyl and remove it where I need to rivet the skin. I leave the rest on there to prevent scratching the skin.

Clumsy, I forgot to prime four side panels of the inside of the baggage compartment. Extra work.

Dimpling the floor panels of the baggage compartment. Almost ready to build the fuselage up again.

Time: 5 Hours, Rivets: 0/0 (2019-12-08)

Time: 3 Hours, Rivets: 8/0 (2019-12-11)

Video

Wing Walk Doubler

ph-mnx — Sun, 10 Jun 2018 18:57:58 +0000

One of those perfect days. Early morning flight lesson, nice lunch and than of to the workshop for some plane building.
This time it was the wing walk doublers, that is the first part of fitting the skins to the wings.

It took me some time to visualize what had to be done. The drawings didn’t help, so I had to figure it out with five sentences. Where did I left these parts that I have to use to create these doublers. Turns out they are between the sheets of the wing skin. From the text it looked I had to figure out where to position the doubler on the spar. In the end it turned out its displacement was given relative to the skin not the wing.

Here you can see the doubler edge is the same as the skin is. The displacement is 9/16″ from the leading edge. Ok this took me for about an hour, now it’s smooth sailing.

Once everything is positioned, match drilling is easy.

Deburring takes a while since there are a lot of holes in the skins.

I probably have some redundant markings, but I don’t want to run the risk of loosing the orientation of match drilled parts. The left wing was easy after having everything straightened out for the right one.
Yet another glorious day, building my RV.

Time: 3 Hours, Rivets: 0/0