A tale of two tanks

Posted on May 6, 2016 by majuro15

Many folks have shared great stories about their troubles sealing tanks using pro seal. There are tips and tricks and dos and don’ts. Finally, there are balloons. Yes, balloons. The test kit Van’s sells to test the tanks have balloons. Lightly pressurize the tank with all openings sealed, and hope the balloon is the same size tomorrow morning as it was the night before. After my water test of the tanks sans the spar plate, I was pretty confident that I’d only have one or two little issues.

Well, this is off to a great start.

We obviously have some leakage. I pressurized the tank slightly again and used a water and dish soap solution to see if I could find bubbles. Turns out this is the best way to find leaks immediately and long term. I discovered it only takes a very tiny hole for air to get through the pro seal. And if air can make it through, then fuel definitely can. Now, one thing to keep in mind is that the leak could also be around the temporary fittings to close the tank up tight. Thus was the case for my first tank, as it wound up to be the balloon leaking not the actual tank.

So one tank was perfect on the first attempt. The second was not.

Okay, no worries, just apply more pro seal on the outside and it will seal it up. In my minimalist mentality, I decided to only apply pro seal where the immediate area showed a leak. Wrong idea. I went through three apply and cure sessions (three days) before I finally smeared the whole seam with a nice layer of pro seal and got rid of the bubbles.

After another two day balloon test with no issues, I primed the last bit and happily bolted the tanks onto the wings. I guess it could have been worse, but I’m very happy this is behind me in the project now.

Quit flapping around

Posted on May 4, 2016 by majuro15

The last of the moveable surfaces to be built were the flaps. After the ailerons, the flaps are very similar and work went rather quickly. I learned from the past mistake of not labeling the items and was very careful on placement of components.

Again, I didn’t use pro seal to do the trailing edges, as careful back riveting proved to yield nice results. Here is a good example of the loose edges vs the finished riveted edge.

After finishing those up, I went ahead and mounted them to the wing with appropriate hardware and moved onto the next project. One thing to note, I am still not above messing up and having to drill out rivets. I mistakenly riveted two pieces together backwards and wound up having to drill out all of these rivets and redoing. It’s an important skill to not forget.

Wing feathers

Posted on March 19, 2015 by majuro15

Ailerons are the next project on the wings and I was able to pull all the parts down from the racks while putting away the fuselage. As with the elevators and rudder, it’s a pretty straight forward process. I did have a personal problem of keeping the parts labeled correctly. When I dissassemble, I typically use sharpie marker to label the parts. Problem is when you clean them prior to priming, the sharpie comes off. You can tell your self that you’ll remember or set them in order, but something always happens. I’ll have a plan before attacking the flaps.

It was a tight fit to buck the bottom skin onto the spar, so the Mrs. came out to insert rivets while I kept my hand burried in the skins. As with the elevators, I elected to not proseal the trailing edges. Withpatience and a good balanced approach, you can get great results back riveting the trailing edge right away and without all the mess.

I went ahead and bolted both sides onto the wings once complete. They fit well and add a lot of surface area to the wings, which makes you feel like progress is being made! I’ll tackle the controls before riveting on the bottom wing skins. Flaps are up next.

Let’s unpack

Posted on March 3, 2015 by majuro15

With a big wooden crate in the garage and fewer parts left on the storage racks, it is time to unpack the fuselage and get a bit more organized around the shop.

I was surprised at how well the individual parts were packaged in the crate. I wound up with a massive pile of duct tape, shrink wrap, and paper! However, I will say that all the parts arrived without a single damaged item.

There are a lot of hardware bags. I took the opportunity to rearrange my plastic parts bins and finish labeling everything with my label maker replacing the masking tape and marker from the previous builder of the wing kit. It takes a bit of time, but makes finding parts really quick and easy. It also helped me inventory all the little things. After unpacking everything, my only issue was 40 AN3 instead of AN4 bolts. A quick email to Van’s and they were on the way to me.

I put most of the sheet metal parts up on the racks above our garage door — man are those things earning their keep! I went ahead and pulled down the last parts for the flaps, as those are the next project to work on. The cabin top was precariously hoisted up to the ceiling for longterm storage and some new brackets were put on the wall for the rudder and pedal assembly. Speaking of, the master cylinders were the last pieces I needed to complete the rudder pedals, so I went ahead and installed them according to plans from Approach Control. These things are a work of art and now they have a nice home until they get installed in the fuse..

Planes, trains, and trucks

Posted on March 2, 2015 by majuro15

Several months ago, I placed a rather expensive order with Van’s for one (1) RV-10 fuselage kit. The process itself involved a lot of emails back and forth to a very helpful lady in OR to figure out any additions/deletions that I wanted to make to the kit. It’s a very popular question, so here’s what I did:

Removed:

All windows and main windscreen (to be replaced by CE Bailey’s)

Rudder pedal components (dictated by Approach Engineering)

Instrument panel (using Aerosport)

I inquired about adding the doors into the fuse kit instead of the finishing kit but you get penalized for messing with a good thing and I figured I’ve got plenty to work on.

Now, this wouldn’t be a good story without drama. The drama started by asking if I could ship the crate by UPS Freight and my company’s account which earns an incredible discount. Van’s agreed but marked the BOL collect instead of 3rd Party. This equaled a temporary bill of over $4000 from UPS. Long story made short, I correct the first issue in short order and got the charges back down to a reasonable $233 including residential delivery.

Which brings up an interesting point. Delivery. Long way from OR to NC. Lot of different ways to get here. This is how our shipment did it. Loaded onto a semi trailer which was then loaded onto a train car which then broke somewhere in Idaho without anyone knowing it meaning it got lost. I discovered this for UPS on Wednesday while tracking the shipment online. It said it was in OR on Wednesday and on time scheduled for delivery on Thursday. Right.

A week later and some great help from a real live person who works for UPS in CLT, the crate showed up to our house and we pushed it in the garage. Finally home safe and sound and thanks to a comprimise, all at a bargain freight charge of $100.

In other news lately

Posted on March 1, 2015 by majuro15

In between the fuel tank tasks, I’ve been able to tackle a lot of smaller projects and tasks. In no particular order, here’s what else I’ve been working on.

Aileron trim servo: This was a pretty easy project, assembling the trim mounting which is actually built on an access panel that will mount to the bottom of the left wing. Along with the actuator arm and some hidden hardware, the assembly attaches via springs to the aileron pushrod inside of the wing. The actual servo is also hidden under the bracket. I’ve ran trim servo wire from the wing root to the servo location and will have a disconnect to make mainenance simple.

Flap gap fairing: These are long pieces that fill the void between the rear spar and top wing skin and provide better aerodynamics for the flap. They were pretty easy to install and finally filled the reminaining line of rivet holes in the rear spar. I was surprised at how much rigidity it also provides to the top wing skin where it overlaps the flaps.

Switches: I wanted to get an idea of what my Apem switches were going to look like lit up and ensure that I could gget the lighting to behave like I want it to. Each switch has two independent LEDs and the switch itself is DPDT. What others have done worked for me usiing one pole of the switch to control the bottom LED which provides a status indicator for the switch. The top LED will be controlled with an on/dimmer dial and linked to a FDS LC-50 lighting controller which will control all interior and panel lighting. There is a bit of bleed on the lighting but I think it will have minimal impact once installed.

Flying: It’s really important to me to keep flying throughout my build. Rather than the typpical 172, I got a chance to take a ride in a Champ to go eat lunch and check out some other RV’s with a new friend. It was a great day and I really enjoied my first tail dragger flight!!

Closing the gaps

Posted on February 26, 2015 by majuro15

The final step for the tanks is to seal the rear baffle in place. This is always a bit tricky as you have to put a bead of proseal and then place the baffle in using it as a squeege and hoping that it seals internally. If not, it’s a tough fix as you now can’t get inside the tank.

Using the applicator gun helps here get a nice even bead of proseal in place. Putting a cleco in every hole, I let it set up overnight as usual and came back the next day to finish riveting. With the perfect world scenario, the rivet line would be outside of the wetted fuel area. However, if there might be a leak, I decided to continue my habit of wet riveting. This would make it easier to seal from the outside.

While the tanks set up, I turned to preparing the wing for close up. I want to follow other’s advice on finishing everything inside the wing before riveting the bottom skin on. Wiring is a big part of that so I ran the first bit of conduit. This is a real pain in the ass. Yes, I said pain in the ass. It’s my blog, so I can say it. And it’s true. The corrugated conduit from Van’s is a royal pain to pull through. You basically have to pop each ridge through the hole. Starting from the middle of the wing, I pulled inboard and outboard to minimize the number of ribs the conduit has to be pulled through.

After a lot of sweating and some worn out hands, conduit is in place. At the locations where wiring will exit the conduit, I cut a hole after wrapping the conduit in duct tape. This made it a bit more sturdy and allowed the gromet to stay in place better. The rubber gromet will prevent any chafing. I tacked this in with a little silicone to help keep in place for the long term.

I will be terminating all connections at the wing root for a couple of reasons. First to allow me to do as much wiring and plumbing as possible early on in the build process. Second, it will allow me to keep the wings off of the fuse down the road as well. I went ahead and pulled string through the conduit from the wingtip and seperately each exit to the wing root. I then ran wiring for the heated pitot probe along with tubing for the pitot and angle of attack hook ups. The wiring for the aileron trim servo and coax for the two Archer antennas in the wingtips were all secured for later connections.

Finally, I installed the newly arrived servo mount for the autopilot roll servo. The same bracket fits Dynon and TruTrak servos, which covers the spectrum for Dynon or AFS avionics. I’ll be purchasing the servo down the road.

On a wing and a…well, just on a wing

Posted on January 28, 2015 by majuro15

With the recent success of the fuel tanks boosting my spirit, I got to work over a long weekend on the wing and leading edge union. It’s a big step, as it adds a lot of surface area and shape to the wing. It also now takes on the appearance of a wing so hopefully folks can tell what the heck is hanging from some wooden rack in my garage!
I started solo by clecoing the leading edge to the right wing spar. Working on the bottom first, when I got to the top side of the wing (it’s laying upside down) I noticed that the skins overlapped instead of a nice butt joint. Thus, I removed all those clecos and started from the top side (again on the bottom as it’s upside down) first to get the joint smooth.

It worked like a charm and within no time, I was using my squeezer to rivet the bottom of the skin to the spar. This is when a tool like this comes in handy, as it makes quick work and nice consistent results.

Then it was time to figure out how to position the wing so that two of us could rivet the top skin. It worked out for me to use the DRDT2 dimpler as a spar stand and the wooden cradle on the other end. I put a couple of pieces of wood to block it and it provided a very stable stand for the wife and I to team up for some riveting.

We made great progress, finishing both leading edges, the rib/spar rivets, and moving on to modifying the wing rack for the final time. With the leading edges on the spar, I had to move to the carpet tactic to form a soft cradle for the leading edge. We had the material and it was a quick fix. Hopefully the last time we’ll need to reconfigure it.

I used the good weather to swap the wings from side to side on the rack and finish priming the interior of the left wing. The last project of the day was to blow out both tanks very well and ensure no foreign contaminants were left in them before sealing them up as the next task.

The sweet nectar of Pro-Seal Success

Posted on January 26, 2015 by majuro15

So excited that this post only needs one picture and the knowledge that there is exactly 30 gallons of fluid behind that dry-as-a-bone rivet.

Are we there yet?

Posted on January 25, 2015 by majuro15

The right fuel tank cap flange is not my friend. This same rivet continues to leak. I’ve inspected with mirrors, flashlights, magnifying glass, and fingertips to no avail. It drips the third test just as it has the first two. At this point, it was clear that there was a path for the water to get to that hole from somewhere obscure and slathering proseal on the back isn’t fixing it. I decided to drill it out all together.

I then surgically removed a chunk of proseal from the back of the flange covering the shop head. I cleaned the area well and mixed up a mini-batch of proseal, this time resealing the hole from the front before inserting and setting the rivet. I then resealed the back and put one more generous layer of proseal, basically covering the inside of the skin and flange from the end rib all the way over to the flange.
The good news is that the once-large leak is no more and the rest of the tank was finally behaving. All of this testing time has given me ample opportunity to finish up the leading edges with a bit of help from the Mrs. and a buddy who came over to drink a beer and was voluntold to learn how to rivet in quick order. He now owns 1/100,000,000 of an RV-10!

Tim and Laura's RV-10 "Tess"

Building and Flying N1017H

Author Archives: majuro15