Deja Stab

About a year after Osp was delivered PA determined that the fin and rudder needed reinforcing, and sent me a kit with oversleeves to be riveted over the existing tubing.

Further testing determined the oversleeves were not necessary, but by this time I had already installed them. The SeaRey LSA/X is a little porker, a kit that used to come in under 900# often now weighs in the 1,000# range, leaving a small payload envelope to stay below the 1,435# max weight for an amphib. In addition, the SeaRey has a long tail moment and a short nose, meaning any excess weight in the tail requires more to compensate in the nose. Removing them would have left the structure weakened as a result of the holes I had drilled, so I was caught in a Catch-22.

After debating it, I decided to go ahead and acquire new stab frames, and while I was at it I acquired the new Friese ailerons. I'll fly Osp with the "Classic" ailerons, then switch to the newer ones at a date in the future if I want. By building them now I'd be able to paint everything at once and match the paint.

We've been there and done this before, but boiled linseed oil is still a sticky mess to apply and clean up.

Prep the hangar...

 and review old photos about previous assembly/covering days.

I really had to take a breath and ask myself if I wanted to do this again, if it was worth saving the weight. A quick slice of a knife ended the debate. 

That's a lot of junk off a single stab. 

A beat up hangar scale showed just under 2# removed, I stopped at the post office on the way home and got a more accurate reading of 2.1#/side, leading to a 4.2# weight removal from the tail, and saving an undetermined amount of weight I would have needed to add to the nose to counter the oversleeves. Worth it.

A long time ago...

It's not the years, it's the (s)miles.

Covering is FUN!!

Last gap

Spring, and a young man's dreams to to airplanes. (and with one house sold, he gets a day or two to relax....)

The last thing to do is the stab/fin gap seals, which means reattaching the stabs. Had I known I could have done all this last year when I had everything set up in the hangar, but we were also racing the weather to get the airplane over to Einar's. (BTW, the wings in the background are covered with some cheap sheets I pickup up at the Salvation Army, so even though they're getting direct sunlight on them they're protected from UV damage.)

Test fit the seal with the weather stripping on, and mark.

The "steampunk" reinforcing mods for the stab got marked so I didn't drill into their rivets. Ironically, I recently learned from PA that the reinforcing sleeves were not needed, but they never told us. Had they told me in time they might have caught me before I mounted them, saving some weight. The lack of communication from PA has been one of the most frustrating parts of this build.

As with the other seals, it's all about the alignment. It will probably never be noticed if a seal doesn't perfectly align with a stab, but I'll know, and if there's time to do it, there's time to do it right.

As in the final stages of mounting the aileron gap seals, I did the corners, then filled in the rest afterward.

Here you get a better look at the offset I had to do so I would not drill into the reinforcements. I'll have to get some longer rivets in this area, too.

Mirror, mirror, on the bench. Why do it twice when you can copy the first?

 
And Yes, it's been a pain to remove the Sharpie marks from the painted areas after drilling. Be warned!

Remember to cauterize the holes in the covering after you're done drilling them.

Closing the gaps

A few years ago my airline underwent a merger with another one, and I spent a lot of time on the airplane last year waiting for the dust to settle. With Jim's help I got far more done than I dreamed, but now that the merger is over and I know my job is secure, the priority for this year is finding a home for Giuliana and I.


Einar has some projects he needs to do in the big shop, and we've moved OspRey from the paint shop into his home garage.

First he put his welding talents to use repairing a horse trailer for a local charity. Painting the trailer also allowed him to start using the paint booth and get a feel for the changes he was going to have to make to make it fully useable for painting the SeaRey.

I'm working on the airplane as I can, and with Osp settled into her new digs I was able to complete the aileron gap seal on the right wing.

 A couple days later I got the rudder gap seal done. A LOT easier to do than the ailerons and flaps!

A few weeks later I had a nice block of days off, and I had planned on some quality time in the shop finishing up the gap seals. Nature had other plans, though, and I ended up miserably sick for almost the entire time. Wasn't a total waste since Bellingham got hit by a blizzard at the same time.
 

An old trick from model airplanes, blocking up the trailing edge of the elevator before starting the gap seals.

Hard to see in these images, but one thing I was being anal about was getting the gap seals even so they don't bulge enevenly upward (top), but instead line up nicely (bottom).

Something else I tried was to just pin the top edges of the gap seal, then pin the bottom before drilling/clecoing all the holes in-between. It worked fine, but I'm not sure one method is better than another.

Next day I came back out and did the left elevator. Since it's a kitplane by an amateur builder, there's bound to be some variation between the left and right side, but fitting the right hand gap seals onto the left elevator showed that the fit was acceptable, and I was able to use them as a template.

I decided just pinning the top and bottom corners was the easiest method after all

Off to work for a few days, going to snow again while I'm gone. I think my garden is going to be nothing but frostbitten stumps this spring....