Cabin Doors & Transparencies - Part 3

I'm 100 hours into the finishing kit and have yet to escape section 45.  This is mostly due to the doors, modifications and some mess ups.  The doors I would put so far as the most difficult part of the build.  If you're really good with fiberglass and fittings then you probably won't have an issue.  But between the sanding, fitting and all the little pieces I've had my share of issues.   As mentioned before I went with the Aerosport Low Profile handle and the Plane Around 180 degree door kit with center locking cam. Worth it but it just adds time to your build.  100 hours in and I'm still on section 45.

Shown below are some random pictures of the doors.  These were taken before I cut and tapped the stock Vans rods.  I ended up fully extending them, marking the location and then cut about 5/8" past that to accommodate the new pins.  I also had to tap the hole which went a lot easier than I expected.

Here are some random pictures I took of the inside delrin piece for the cam as well as the delrin piece on the cabin frame.  One thing to note is I don't think there's a good way to determine where the pins go into the cabin top.  I tried the Vans method of using a sharp bolt and drill there... that resulted in the rear pin being off and the door being about 1/8" out. Cause me to post this on the Vans board.  I ended up making essentially a doubler to ensure the door didn't joggle around.  On the left door I tried two different methods both resulting in a bit of manual hole modifying to get it to sit correctly.  I'm going to go back and make some doublers for those as well but in reality I'm not sure if they're actually needed.  Even if the delrin wears out and the door shifts 1/16" -1 / 8" outward the center cam will keep it in place. Maybe I'll try some milled fiber and expoxy vs a doubler...

When the doors or shutting then you make something to mimic a compressed strut in order to find where to put your mounting hardware for your door.  Below is a picture of the 4 bushings I made, the wood 'strut stick' and the 4 hinge pieces for the door.  After priming the hinge pieces I had to reduce 2 of the bushings down to 3/8" to accommodate the Plane Around strut attachment pieces I installed when I put the overhead in.

End result is functioning doors!

So what's left?  Well two primary things, one is size everything to fit the Mcmaster Carr door seal and a lot of fill/sanding/fill routine to get everything smoothed out and the door reveal where I want it. A while back I thought I had fit the door seal but after handing the doors I noticed several things.  One is I cut way too much off the bottom, it was down to about a 1/2" and what I really wanted is 1" on the sides and bottom and 1.25" at the top.

To make sure I was measuring everything the same I made two little sanding/measuring tool type things.  One for the sides and bottom and the other for the top. These gave me the quick ability to run it along and see how much I needed to take off and what area's I had to build back up.  To my surprise I only had to build up the bottom and one 6" on the right front.  Everything else I was able to just said down to the right dimensions.

Took some pictures of how I did the build up.  Pretty straight forward I made some back pieces out of cardboard and tape.  Pushed this up against the frame and drew the 1" up so I knew how much milled fiber flox I needed.  When with milled fiber for the strength and the ease of use.

Low bottom lip

Cardboard form

Milled flox and peel ply

Ready for trimming

Post sanding

 After I had everything to the exact specification I decided to throw about a half inch of some fairly stout fiber glass tape to further reinforce the edges and give me a bit of a hump that I can contour out later. Pretty typical process of wetting the fiberglass, putting on the tape and wetting out the tape further.  After I bit put some peel ply on it to cure.  The end result was solid.

The next step is to make sure I have a uniform gap of 1/4" between the inner door and the channel.  I will sand or build up where I need to.  Then I have to make sure the lip can fit seal so that also has to be 1/4 inch.  I will sand or build up on the inside where I need to.  Then of course all the micro fill/sanding to smooth out the door channel, interior area's I've fouled up and then place the seal on.  Then I'll move onto the rest of the cabin top exterior and door interiors. 

Cabin Doors & Transparencies - Part 2

I have been traveling frequently for work which eats up entire weeks at a time.  In several cases weeks at a time.  My job makes this build possible, so maybe in an indirect way it's a building activity... All the travel has made the last few months of building sporadic, often ending up finding little things to do but not doing big needle moving changes... and I'm still on section 45... I did complete the initial glassing of the windshield fairing. It's extremely ugly right now but I wanted to wait until I get the doors on and latching before working the external cabin top.

Windshield Fairing peel ply'd

Working on the door latching I did a terrible job documenting the process.  It's actually a bit confusing because I'm using the some of the stock parts, the Aerosport flush mount handle and finally the PlaneAround 180 degree latch kit.  During the 15 or so hours I've spent on these it was broken up by numerous days and it was enough to juggle between the three different set of instructions figuring out what I need to do and when.

I'm also using cam locks by FortX vs the ACS locks that I think the handles were designed for.  So I had to do some trail and error engineering to get it to fit flush on the outside and function on the inside.  My end solution was to split a rubber grommet and shape it into a gasket that fit around the lock making it proud enough to line up flush with the glamour plate of the handle kit.  Again I didn't take any pictures of the process but you can see the end fit on a picture.

Working handles

Door slotted

Exterior handle, with lock

Interior handle, with lock

I still have quite a bit to do.  I am filling some time working on things like the tires, brakes, engine mount ect.  But will wait till those sections to post the pictures.  On the door it's mostly the inner workings and get them on the plane.  Hope to have that done in the next week or so, before I go out of town again.

Cabin Doors & Transparencies - Part 1

Section 45

If you've done it yourself or have followed anyone's build you'll know that the doors are a dreaded step in the build.  I'm about 50 some odd hours into section 45 and probably have a good 50-100 hours to go till completion.  Need a bit of attention to detail to work through the section and should ask questions if you have any. Mess ups not might not come around till later and then you will end up having to back track.

I'm moving a bit out of order in this section.  For example where I'm sitting right now is preparing to glass in the windshield.  Per the plans this is typically done post door finalization, however waiting on some after market parts to do the door functioning mechanisms. It's a non issue but wanted to throw that out before I continue through this. Also will probably be more pictures than writing, you spend a lot of time on small parts of the plans.

Cabin Doors

This jist of the doors is you take the parts Vans sends you, rough cut and line up to a series of index holes.  Not my index holes were a bit off so as long as you can get the front and the back to line up it all works out.  After initial trimming and test fitting I added some insulation and then glued them together.

Free Child Labor

Free Adult Labor

Ready for some brackets and then glue

More kid labor

Insulation before glue, didn't install where door mechanism will go.

Parabeam material from Vans.  Interesting stuff

My middle kid was a huge help on gluing the door halves together.  She walked into the garage at the wrong time and I quickly recruited her.  I used a mess of tape to hold these things in place, checking and triple checking.  At this point if they are way off then you're pretty much going to start over with a new set.

 After epoxy cures you can then remove and trim up.  After I could get them to set in the door cabin recess I made new brackets to hold them in place aligned with the index tabs.  These were used to align and get the door hinges together.

Typical to using the McMaster door seal is the modification of closing off the door hinge gap as well as using nutplates.  Here are pictures of that activity.

Transparencies

In between some things I got working on the transparencies, this includes the windscreen fit, rear and door windows. I also painted the glare shield which I plan to cover at some point also.  I went ahead and touched up the center brace since it got scratched fitting the wind screen.  I used Lord Adhesive to attach all transparencies and am now in the process of taping out and finishing up the outside of these to make them look good.  Also have prepped the windscreen area for all the layups and filler on that.

Final Fit Windshield

Current State, oh I put the engine mount on too...

The above picture shows the planes current progress.  I have a lot to do and just for reference here's a quick checklist to finish this section.

• Install Aerosport door handle and PlaneAround latch system.
• Get final 3/16th or so reveal around door.
• Do windscreen transition and layups
• Sand, fill, sand, fill, sand.... the area's around the transparencies and any areas I want to look better
• Finish and paint inside of door.

Hey only 5 things but like I said in the beginning certain tasks such as the sand, fill repetitive process will take weeks if not months!

Empennage Revisit

About a year ago I called my Empennage finished.  I mentioned that it's more of a 'done for now' type thing than being finished.  I decided to wait to do this aft piece to make it easier to mess within the tailcone while I tried to figure out what all happens back there. There were several things I wanted to work through at a later day before I went ahead and riveted on the aft tailcone skin.  Could of done this a year ago but really didn't know, wanted to limit my time climbing into the tailcone.

I'm actively working through the doors which involve some fiberglass work leaving gaps of time to work on other things.  One of these things was to finish up the riveting of the aft top tailcone skin.  Since I have a good idea of what's going to go back there I decided to at least get cable tie bases secured. I also used some caterpillar edging around the lightening holes where I will end up with cabling pushed through. Below is a picture showing the cable tie bases secured to the side.  I ended up mirroring both sides to give me options later on when running cabling.  These are just 3/4" bases where I used acetone to remove the factory adhesive and I used some super strong 3M 2 part epoxy type stuff to glue it to the sides.  Surface prep is always important so when you figure out where you want to put these you can just sand a bit off.  To test I pulled on these fairly hard to a point that if I kept pulling would end up just puckering the skin.

Secured cable tie bases 

With that out of the way I riveted up the aft skin.  A majority of it I did solo but found it much easier and had better results with a second set of hands.  My neighbor came down and helped buck these rivets (He ended up having to crawl into the tailcone).  This was one of the few times that I've riveted with two people and to be honest you get a much more consistent result when you can focus on holding the rivet gun in place.  Looking back it would of been nice to do the entire plane with two people. After that we cleaned it up a bit and cleco'd back on the center section.  I will wait till much later to rivet this piece on.  Probably during final assembly.

Aft skin riveted in place.

Finishing Kit Delivery

It took about two and a half months but this morning my finishing kit was finally delivered.  To be fair the original date was early January but I traveled for work two last month for extended period so had them put a delay on shipping until I knew I was going to be here for a week.  Surprisingly the box was a lot smaller than I anticipated.  There was a small puncture in the box so cracked it open while the driver was still here to make sure nothing was damaged.  All is good.

Finishing Kit

With my neighbors assistance we were able to inventory the kits fairly expeditiously. After a few hours everything was accounted for and in place for future attachment to the plane.  The pictures are a bit misleading as everything still takes up quite a bit of space, but there are a lot of larger pieces.