Jetlag therapy

Remember all that time off I had this summer, when it seemed like I was constantly working on the airplane? It's payback time, and since mid-November I've only been home a couple days at a stretch. Jetlag is cumulative, but recovery is helped by doing something you love (like working on an airplane) and I've learned to gauge my fatigue by starting with small projects and seeing how the day goes from there. Some days it's all I can do just to come out and sweep the hangar, other days start easy and by the end I'm into a complex project.

I'm home for a long pre-Christmas trip stretch, with Sparky at work I came out to do some simple things. PA uses some #10x3/4" machine screws to hold the side rails in place, and probably no one else will notice but I thought they looked disproportionately long so I ordered some #10x5/8" ones. Replacing them was the perfect job for a jetlag day, and you can see the difference here.

I was starting to feel better, and finished something I started when I was rewiring the electrical system for the new radio. The Dynon system is updated via a USB port, and Approach wires a USB pigtail into the harness. I added an extension to it, and put a layer of heat shrink over the connection to hold it together.

After that I (carefully) used a grinder to cut a slot into the instrument panel L-brace, and screwed it in place. 

This allows me to hide the USB port but get easy access for updates.

Feeling good and in a groove, I finished the gap seal on the right flap. Hopefully I'll get to the aileron gap seal tomorrow.

Oh, by the way. How 'bout them Seahawks?

 

Power on, Jim. Power on, Steve. :fistbump:

The battery was waiting when I got home, an Odyssey PC680.

Don't know what it is about Einar, but he always shows up at the right time. Sunday Jim and I had unpacked the nose and prepped the frame, and I had literally said "This is when Einar usually shows up." when him and Craig walked in. It took all four of us to carefully move the avionics from the crate to the nose.

The cockpit is really coming together. Beautiful. 

 

We've had a steady stream of visitors, here Merrill Wien stops by to chat. Local SeaRey builders Ken and Mike also came up.

 

Jim's supplies arrived, and the doctor laid out his tools 

Thanks for bringing the Florida sunshine too, Jim!

 
I started working on Ken Berger's ball bearing modification for the aileron torque tube.

Time to power up. The services of the BLI AFFS were not required, they were just cruising the airport and stopped by to say hello. The electrical install went in easily, but Jim uses some proprietary parts and techniques to build and mount his electrical system so I won't be publishing any photos of the install.

Configuring the Dynon System. Engineers want to make it complicated, but after thousands of hours in glass cockpit airplanes I know the Simple is Better, and I'm getting rid of as much extraneous information on the display as I can.

The three most common things said in a glass cockpit are "What's it doing? Why is it doing it? How do we stop it?" 

Moving on, a big reason I brought Jim out was to check over my work. I had a feeling I had not put the boom tube low enough in the hull, and I was right. We had to undo everything,

pry the boom tube up

and cut the transom down another 3/8". Better to have too much material than have cut it down too far. 

 

 Much better. Embarrassing, but fixable.

Some fine tuning of the turtledeck. Trim the lower edge of the carpet off 

and a little off the bottom edge

for a perfect fit. How many clecos is enough? However many it takes. 

With the turtledeck in place it's time to move on to the brackets inside.

 Attention to detail: beveling the holes in the aluminum/ply/aluminum arch sandwich.

I've also been making slow progress on the bearings. Here the sleeves are in place with a bit of sleeve retainer, and left to dry overnight. We may just be covering the wings Saturday.

Oh nose!!!!

I'm an idiot when it comes to electrical systems, so my electrical system and panel are going to be built by Jim Ratte. He's asked that I ship everything down to him, which means building a big crate.

Call me cheap, call me sentimental, but these are the screws from the original shipping crate. Some of the wood is being used for the dolly, and the rest was used by another person to crate T-6 parts.

Before I ship everything off Jim asked that I mate the nosedeck to the hull, and trim the panel to fit when the veneer is done. Apparently each nosedeck and hull have some minor variations, so it makes sense.

First, cleanup the flashing on the edge.

Measure 1" in. I added 0.25 for a little safety margin.

And carefully cut. 

The panel will be attached to this lip.  

For the umpteenth time, a fit check. 

 .

Then use a rivet spacer to set the 3" spacing. Note the stereo heaters.

Deep breaths, start drilling and clecoing from the front. 

She's got a little bit of an overbite. 

Some corrective surgery on her lower lip fixes it.

Much better. Still got a little hook, but a SeaHawk's beak is supposed to.

Almost looks like she's smiling. 

I was going to use ratchet straps to pull the deck and hull together, but they kept slipping on the curve of the bow. I finally just forced them together and it worked fine.

But the ends just did not sit flush. I'm told that's normal and it will be covered with the edge strip. After these were taken I added a few more clecoes.

OspRey doing her catfish impersonation. Note that to make it fit I had to add more clecoes every so often off the spacing I had set earlier.  

Kinda weird to see open space there. 

That's better. 

And it's time to make the final decisions about switch layout, radio, etc. 

Here's the current almost-final design. After decades of flying rental aircraft with crappy radios I swore that when I owned an airplane I'd have excellent radios, so (this week) I've decided to go with a PAR100EX radio/intercom system.

Merry Christmas, Happy Solstice, and Go SeaHawks!!!!!!