What's All The Flap About?

Finished the flaps today.  As promised I took a few detail shots to show how it all goes together.

The flap ribs are just 1/2 inch diameter thin wall aluminum tubing.  They are inserted into a pre-cut hole in the spar and are secured from moving around by a plastic plug that is riveted from the front of the spar.    In this picture I have laid out the main parts plus a tool used to hold the plastic plug in place while it is riveted.  the spar shows the 1/2 inch hole opening and you can see the hole in the front of the spar for the rivet.  Below the spar are the plastic plug, aluminum tube that is the rib, and another piece of tubing that will fit inside the aluminum tube to hold the river against the ID of the 2 inch diameter spar.

Here I have the rivet inserted into the hollow plug with the inner tube sticking through the rib tube.  The rivet is actualy inserted from the outside of the spar.

Here it is ready for riveting.  I can now press the aluminum tube and the inner tube hard against the ID of the spar while I set the rivet.

Here looking through the 1/2 inch hole in the spar you can see the plug is riveted and will stabilize the rib tube from sliding around.

And a shot of the tube sticking out of the spar prior to installing the trailling edge which kas a similar plastic plug on its outside.

Here the flaps are finished.  The blue tape secures the trailing edge while I attached the root ribs.  Eventually these will be covered with Poly Fiber and that tension in the fabric will hold the trailing edge on.  The root ribs are fairly conventional and are riveted onto the spar and trailing edge.

Time to move back to the fuel tanks.  I thought my friend Dennis was going to come over today but I never checked on his status this week.  Its a good thing he didn't show because I was not quite ready.  I did find enough parts to assemble the rear inspection panel and install one of the fuel sending units .  I had to install some anchor nuts for this.  Some of them twice since I put the wrong size on first.

I didn't get much done last week as I had to tend to Mom's hot water heater.  All is fine there now.  I did receive my tooling so I can press on with the center section drilling this week.  More on that later.

Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler!!

In order to Let The Good Times Roll in an airplane you have to have ailerons, so while I'm waiting on some #20 reamers to finish the center sectionI decided to move on to the aileron frames.  By the way,I used  up all 250 clecos I ordered the other day and will need some more for the spar of the center section.  All of the copper colored ones in this picture will be black.  The bottom of the spar is the same.  About 100 in all.

The aileron frames consist of a large diameter front spar, a small diameter trailing edge and some tubes for ribs.  No real airfoil section just the taper.  First off you have to install the nutplates for the hinges.  These are close spaced 1/4 inch diameter nutplates and they are a pain to install due to the closeness of the river to the thread.  The sheet metal doubler has to be laid out as well but is easy to rivet.

The leading edge spar has a smaller tube riveted inside to form the outboard end.  Here it is inserted into the larger tube.

The large holes you see below will receive the tubes that are the ribs.  They really just act as compression members.

A detail of the nutplate prior to drilling.

And one of the sheet doubler prior to marking it and drilling.  I put extra washer under the head so I don't have to engage all od the self locking thread of the nutplate to hold it for drilling.  They will not be used in the end.

Another view of the tube extension.

The sheet doubler after it has been drilled but not riveted.

Here the extension has had the four large pull rivets installed.

In order to rivet the nutplate I have to install small diameter collars on the stem so the nose of the rivet gun clears the threaded boss.

Once these are done you have to install plastic nipples that will locate the ends of the tubes.  The ones on the leading edge are inside the spar and are not visible.  Here is one on the trailing edge.  They are held on by a large rivet.

The thin looking tubes on the table are the trailing edges.  Once you have installed all of the keepers you simply put the tubes in place and hold it together with tape until you can attach the root rib and outboard end fastener.  I don't have any pictures of that tonight.  I will get some this week and upload them.

I did mage to finish both ailerons this weekend.  Tmac had come over Saturday to help.  Here he is holding a completes frame.

These control surfaces will be covered using the PolyFiber process which uses a heat shrunk dacron Which will hold everything together.

This week I hope to get the flaps done.  They are the same construction except they have a sheet metal rib on both ends and no taper.

Keeping The Ball In The Center

The Airbike moved back to Tmac's this week.  The welding repairs went well.  Time to get back on the AirCam center section.

The first chore was to set up the scaffolding fore and aft for access.  Monte and Frank helped with this.  We had to be careful when we straddled the fuselage.

Sunday was spent drilling the first size holes which were #30s.  A lot of these were drilled from underneath.  This is always a pain and I had to squat a little too.  But I got 2/3s of the bottom done and 3/4 of the top.  Lots of Clecos as well.

We watched the movie 127 hours on Saturday night.  This is the story of the guy who went mountaineering in Utah by himself and slipped and got his arm caught under an 800 lb. boulder.  My drilling arm feels like that tonight.  Since all of the top holes and a lot of the bottom holes get drilled to #19 eventually I had to order more black Clecos.  Never enough of those boogers!!

No More Canoe Jokes Please.

Have installed the center section  so the skins can be drilled.  It went on very smoothly.  It transforms the look of the project.  Less like a canoe now.

Spent Saturday morning moving Chris' RV-10 fuselage to the airport and putting his wings on.  Sunday and Monday I worked on Tmac's Airbike welding up some of the damage from his booboo.  It went well but the pictures are too tedious to put on the Aircam blog.