Rumours of my quitting are greatly exaggerated....

It's been a long few years, no need to post once in a while pics of slow progress, so here's some catching up.


We've been working on beautiful, crisp fall days




and sometimes late into the night.




And winter days. I miss the rustic feel of my old hangar, but it's REALLY nice to have a weather tight hangar and HEAT!!!!





The focus has been on getting OspRey ready for paint, going over every seam and layup, looking for blobs of Polybrush or fabric peeling up.




Dan Older of Old Aire Seaplanes on Lake Whatcom will be doing the painting, and he's a perfectionist, like me. Dan is very popular in the aviation community up here, and OspRey is patiently waiting her turn.




And the hangar door got some needed maintenance.




Turns out my Ameri-King AK-451 was the subject of an emergency AD a few years ago. We were hoping it would pass the test and still be operable but no-go. Not even dropping it onto the concrete hangar floor was enough to set it off. *groan*....




When I cut the notch for the flap pushrod I was new to metal working, the manual said make it .75"-1.0", so I made it 1". After looking at other SeaReys I realized how disproportionate the 1" gap looked, ordered new pylon side covers, and cut it to .75". Much better.




I have also made the acquaintance of a gypsy metalworker named TJ, who travels the west coast only accepting jobs that interest him. We met one night at the hangar, OspRey and him talked and she cooed at him. End result, TJ is going to help me redo the panel and a couple other things.

 


Here's an example of his work. This is the old pylon side cover, with a crimp at the end I did to make it sit tight against the aft pylon tube. 




TJ gave me a demo of his mad skills that night








Niiiiiccceeeee......


We're also working on the nose area, first step was to remove the old, weak plywood battery support that was already showing signs of cracking. We're going to put in a bulkhead for the battery like on the new hulls, and move the ELT to the nose area to get it away from  the heater, and shift weight forward.




Part of the mods requires removing the carpet from from the dash. Heat gun, scraper, and patience.













Lastly, is this my future?

I am Pylon Man....

More metal work, more parts of the airframe disappearing from sight. First, assemble the flap actuator mechanism.

 

The aft ends of the pylon covers should get a slight crimp to fair into the aft root tube better, but not all of us have a 30" brake. A quick visit to Carlson Steel and the guys used their huge press to make a 20 deg bend in the last 1/2" of the 0.016" cover.

Before starting to fit the cover, a little trimming of some brackets, purely for aesthetic reasons.

The top is already notched for the root tube

but not very well. Even in a fixed area it needed trimming. I wonder what and when things changed?

It's non-structural soft aluminum, the side covers are just to hide the pylon interior and they take very little impact loads so they're only 0.016" thick. After experimenting with different tools, I found the aluminum could be easily cut with a cheap pair of scissors. 

Each turtledeck fits slightly differently, depending on the builder, so the pylon is given a generous amount of overlap on the bottom to allow trimming and fitting. Other builders have had luck with making up paper and cardboard templates, but the paper was too flimsy to get a good measurement on,

while the cardboard was too coarse. Jim told me the tolerances were 1/32" of an inch, and while I knew he was joking I wanted to make it look good. 

I decided to just fit the cover as I went. This meant risking scratching the fiberglass on the turtledeck, so I'd have to be careful.

Little by little, snip, snip, snip.

The scratches buffed out.

At the aft end it became obvious it was time for a big cut. Deep breath.

The big cut was exactly right, now it was time to smooth everything out into a smooth curve.

Hmmm... I wonder how symmetrical the sides are? They are? Excellent.

Cuts the work in half, just lay the right on top of the left and trim slightly oversize, just in case.

Better too big than too small.

Now mark the tubes on the inside of the covers

And drill for the rivets. The manual calls for rivets on the diagonal, others debate the necessity. They're mostly there to keep the cover from oil canning in the slipstream and making noise. Of course, with the engine just a couple feet further aft, will you notice?

Now a cool technique. Put a marker in the flap horn and run the motor.

drawing an arc over the flap travel.

Drill a hole for the pivot bolt

And a series of 3/4"-1" holes along the arc.

Sketch a tangential line from hole-hole.

and use snippers to cut out the excess. Then file smooth.

I used a 1" hole saw because I wasn't that confident in my metal skills. In retrospect I wish I had used the 3/4" for a nicer fit, but it's ok.

  

Next, holes for the radiator lines to the heater were cut. Nothing fancy here, just 2 big holes cut next to each other and trimmed to match. 

During final assembly more fairings will be attached at the wing root-pylon junction, and angles get attached at the top of the pylon cover. The front of the angle gets trimmed so it can be anchored behind the root tube front mount.

Part of the angle shows through the flap arc, the belt sander quickly fixed that.

Summer is definitely over, it's sweatshirt time in the hangar, already dropping down into the 40s at night.

The front of my covers had about a 1/2" lip that needed to be trimmed back to be flush with the front root tube.

I love it when a pylon comes together. (sorry, couldn't resist.) Sticky notes denote what rivets go where since you use stainless steel on the metal-metal, and aluminum on the metal-fiberglass along the base.

The second rivet didn't fit, so I grabbed the drill and started cleaning out the hole. Met a lot of resistance and the hair on the back of my neck stood up on end screaming that Something Was NOT Right and STOP NOW!!

Glad I did. I was about to drill through my wire bundle.

Fortunately, all I did was barely dimple a cable.

This is why I'm a bit of a hoarder. A piece of scrap moved the wires out of harms way.

Chunk, chunk, chunk...

A little bit of cutting fluid

And the top is anchored.

I've seen a lot of variance in the aileron tube cover, some like it faired into the pylon covers,

while some like them as outies. This is convention for aircraft, since this way airflow cannot get under the front of the fairing and lift it. However, because it's such a small area and in a bubble of low pressure, you can get away with tucking it into the pylon covers and going against convention.