A quickie job

Home for a quick 24 hours, too rainy to cut the grass so it gives me a good excuse to work in the hangar. The project I've got contracted out isn't ready yet, so I worked on other stuff.

The heater came, courtesy of Jim Ratte. Instead of fitting in the nose by your feet it fits on the boom tube in the baggage compartment. The advantages are weight reduction because you're not carrying the weight of the fluid all the way to the nose and back, and this location eliminates the possibility of a coolant leak in the cockpit. I'm told your feet stay relatively warm in the SeaRey since there is no air movement in the nose and you get waste heat from the avionics. Whereas your shoulders are in the draft from the canopies, and from the aileron tube exiting the cockpit overhead, so having the heater directly behind your shoulders makes sense. The disadvantages are you have to load the baggage compartment carefully around the heater, I'll make it work. More on the install later when the time comes.

Russ Garner came up with a modification of the rear gear actuator mounts. In the stock design they are 2 separate pieces, the force from the gear causes the actuators to attempt to rotate around an AN4 bolt in the center, and an AN5 bolt helps to counter this force.

Russ's mod makes these 2 separate pieces one continuous one, made from .125 6061T6 sheet.  Here's the assembly sequence, took about 3 hours over 2 days.

The sheet came in a 2'x2' square, it took some creative cutting to get the 10" piece out, so I ended up with  a spare. 

Using the original as a template for the first holes.

Put it in place....

Secure with clamps...
 

And drill the other side from the front. 

 
 Once drilled trim the excess off.

And drill the holes for the gear bushings. I was finally about to get rid of the old holes from the original gear setup, which had insufficient gear overcenter. 

Not shown, but I installed the gear legs. Ops Check Good!!!

Again, a comparison to the original 2 piece setup.The front has to have a gap because the aileron control tube runs up the center.

I ended the day (with timely assistance from Ralph) by flipping the hull over in preparation for KeelGuard installation. The stuff is HEAVY, but worth saving the wear and tear on the hull. Ya work to save ounces, and add pounds. Oh well......

Hi ho, hi ho, about an hour later it was back to work I go.

Meet Jim Ratte, the SeaRey Specialist

When I was down at Sun n Fun I took a morning to get some advice from a highly respected SeaRey builder, Jim Ratte. Jim is expanding his business and I can't recommend him highly enough. 

A very good week

I could cover up the way the week started, but I won't. I tried to remount the fuselage using the original holes, but it didn't work, the holes didn't match and I finally sanded the replacement patches off and started over, filling in the holes with an epoxy/filler mixture.

I also elongated the channel bracket mounting hole slightly, so I could adjust them side-side as I was installing the frame.
 

Previously I installed the doublers, then lowered the frame into the hull. This caused problems since with them the frame was tightly fitted to the hull, and if I was off just a little I bent the doubler. I finally realized it was smarter to leave the doublers off, lower the frame into the hull, THEN insert the doublers.Worked like a charm, and I was able to even out the doublers, instead of having one thick one and one thin one.

 

I wasn't as lucky with the drilling this year as I was last year, I ruined a couple doublers when my drilling was not exactly perfect. It took all day of drilling, marking, redrilling, trimming, but I finally got the doublers exactly right. I filled the holes with thickened epoxy, put the frame together and inserted the bolts, let it set up then removed the bolts. Perfect, tight, fit. 

I also tackled the front stringer/crossbeam issue. It was installed offset laterally to the left by 1/2",

 
and uneven longitudinally by 1/4".

Last year my solution to this was to cut into the stringer, weakening it. I talked to other builders and found this was not an uncommon problem with the hulls, and the solution was to notch the channel brackets so they could be adjusted fore/aft to fit with the rubber spacers (this is where I got the idea for notching the bulkhead channel brackets.). I hated to do it, but I found it easier to disassemble the front cockpit, removing the floor pan for easier access.

Like the bulkhead stringers, I filled in the holes, added doublers, redrilled the holes, trimmed the stringer to an even plane, and reglassed the stringer.

And I had to take a minute to assemble the hull, sit in it and remember what I'm working toward. I love the light in the morning during summer.

I've also been working on the design of the panel, using a program called XPanel. Here's the "D" version of the panel, still got some changes to go. Note the analog airspeed indicator and vertical compass in the top for easy reference, engine instruments will be displayed on the Dynon, lights across the bottom flowing in needed sequence from left-right, and accessories (heater, bilge pump) above them.

I didn't like the color I had been using for the interior, the tint was shaded toward yellow, so I shifted to a light tan. I'll be on the road for the next several days for work, when I get home I'm hoping to have something really cool to show you, if the contractor can pull it off.

Prepping for the mate, it was time for odds and ends like cutting a bilge drain hole. I found some gaps in the hull-foam seal so I filled it with a resin slurry. I'll mount the bracket when I flip the hull for some work on it I'll tell you about later.

I kept trimming the turtledeck fitting at the aft clusterbracket until it now fits..

A puzzle was getting the turtledeck far enough aft to cover the hole for the aft flying wires. I finally shifted the bulkhead angle aft, and it fit fine, so I'll have to adjust that bracket in the future, but at least I got that figured out.

Moving on, I mounted the fuel tank sump squeeze bulb.

And I'm still working on fixing the damaged hull section, now just fine-tuning the underlip portion.

D'oh!!!

Last year when I did my frame-hull attachment I messed up one hole and ended up hogging out the stringer.






Tonight I went in to reglass that, but started thinking. When I did my bulkhead I had reversed the channel bracket bolt, thinking that it was incorrect (page 10) because bolts hould always go "down, back and in". Looking at how far I had dug into the stringer for the frame mate it struck me that maybe there was a reason for the bolt to be upside down, so I tested the channel bracket with the bolt in from the bottom, and double checked the manual.







Sure enough, I had screwed up by redoing it "down back and up", the channel bracket bolt MUST come in from the bottom so you don't dig too much of the stringer out making room for the nut. So I spent tonight adding/fitting foam, and I'll reglass the stringer tomorrow.