Today I worked on installing the seatbelts. Unspooling the belts was a challenge since the locking mechanism is gravity sensitive. Meaning, there’s a ball in the spool that has to be oriented a specific way for the spool to release. Once I figured that out, unspooling the belt was pretty easy.
The kit didn’t come with the penny washers that are in the instructions, but did come with some M8 penny washers that seemed to be close enough. I also see there’s some seat belt centering bushings, but I’m not sure where those go. I have a question out to the factory. I also put together another floor panel that covers the flap and elevator controls torque tube assembly under the front seats. Now I just need to start installing the numerous M4 Rivnuts in the center fuselage, an item I’ve been putting off due to it just being a laborious task... Update 1/31/20: I received word from the factory that there is a steel bracket that is already embedded into the canopy. The CAD drawing of the bracket is below. I enlarged the hole a bit and finally was able to see the bracket. Just a quick update.
Installed the rear floor support channels. The skins bend in place if you press on them, so they definitely need them. I also secured the rear parachute cable to the airframe with the AN6 bolt and torqued to spec. I was missing some parts, namely the rear seat strengthening channel and one of the elevator torque tube brackets.
I put an order in for those parts, but it was holding up further progress on the fuselage. So I decided I might as well go ‘Old School’ and make the parts to save some time! I had the forward position rear seat channel handy, so I looked at the plans and it seems it’s the same part, just a bit longer in the back. So I trimmed off the end and it fit perfectly. I took a spare piece of aluminum and drew the outline of the elevator torque tube bracket, cut it out, shaved it down and drilled the holes. An hour of effort saved me at least 6 weeks of delivery time from TAF! I was going through the inventory shelves again to take stock of what I have left to do.
I came across a bag of parts that didn’t have any reference in the manual, so I sent an email to the TAF technical team. The parts were labeled: CF-CHL-031-X-C-0 Rear Floor Skin Support CF-CHL-042-R-C-1 Side Channel Right and Left I was fortunate enough to get a quick response from the man himself, Mike Bleyth! He sent me a screenshot of the manual and pointing to where these parts go. I figure I might as well post this if anyone else had the same question. Also, in my search I went ahead and downloaded the Sling Aircraft app from the Apple store. I downloaded the manuals to do a search and I actually found a nice treat - Work In Progress Sling TSi Manuals for the Fuselage! They seems to be filling in some nice detail with colored images for construction. These are not available on the Dropbox account yet, so if you want a sneak peak, I suggest downloading the app! Working on some odds and ends this week as I’ve had several items ready to be completed. Ideally I’d like to work on a single item and see it through to completion, but I either have a missing part, tool, problem to figure out, etc so I find something else to work on to move forward.
I received a shipment from TAF recently that had the autopilot pushrods, some misc parts and my joystick control assembly. Unfortunately, they only sent one, so I’m still waiting on the other. At least now I can finish up the control pushrods and test it out! I finished up the main landing gear, so it’s all ready to mount. I went with the AN4-26A bolt they provided and just added 2 washers under the head of the bolt to make sure the bolt ends don't hit the wheel spat. I now just have to lift the plane and see how it fits. However, I'm going to have to flip the plane around in the garage with the nose wheel on and angle it for it to fit in the garage. I've also attached the rudder springs. I had to get a flexible drill bit to enlarge the holes for the M5 Rivnut as the luggage floor prevented the drill from fitting. The nose gear took some time to get unbined. The vesconite bushing on the top of the gear was the main culprit, so I took some sandpaper and started sanding by hand and test fitting often. Once I was able to freely twist the bushing, I used a smoother grit to make sure the bushing was contacting the metal with a smooth surface. Next up I'll be finishing up the control torque tubes and connecting the pushrods.. more to come! The factory initially included 2 right flaps in my kit due to some mislabeling. They were able to ship me that along with some other small parts that were missing.
Kinda fun to rivet something again, oddly enough. The flap went together within an hour since I already had the ribs prepared and I knew what I was doing. Once that was done I fit it to the wing along with the aileron I had already done, except for the riveting leading edge. I made sure they alignment was good and riveted the leading edge of the flap while on the wing. From there, I checked alignment with the aileron and the wing tip. It required some maneuvering. I put in one rivet in the center of the leading edge of the aileron and checked again. Made another adjustment, added a rivet, made another adjustment.. getting harder now. And placed the third rivet in. Now it was pretty much secure and aligned! Went ahead and did the rest and it turned out great. From there I connected the pushrods to the aileron and flaps, bolted, applied blue loctite and torqued. On to other things! Happy New Year!
For the second half of the month I’ve been traveling and spending time with the family, so not much progress on the plane recently. I did find a couple days before the new year to start working on the landing gear. First I started putting together the nose gear, thinking this would be a quick install. It turned into anything but quick. The first issue I ran into was the alignment of the long bolts that hold in the bushings. I had to run a drill through the brackets in place, but without the nose gear in place to be able to align the drill. When I put the nose gear in place it was quite a tight fit. It took some light tapping and fiddling, but eventually got them in place. However, now it is quite hard to turn the nose gear.. I couldn’t imagine a smooth flying experience with it requiring that much pressure to turn. I tried applying some grease to the bushings to help, but that didn’t do much. I have seen other builder’s nose gear and it seems they have sanded off the powder coating to get a better fit. Looks like I’ll have to get the belt sander out with some fine grit to shave off a few micrometers. Update 1/3/20: I spoke with Jean and he recommended to identify which bushing is causing the binding and shaving the vesconite bushing itself instead of the nose gear. The welds that hold the brackets settle and cause a bit of misalignment, so the easiest course of action is to just loosen the bushing a bit to relieve the binding issues. Will provide an update once this is done. The next item was the nose gear tire. It was going along pretty well until I realized I needed to secure a washer and nut on the tire valve stem. I tried this with the tube in the tire first, but couldn’t get enough leverage to push the valve stem far enough into the rim for it to catch. I took the tube out and pressed the valve stem from behind, resting on the rubber mallet. That gave me enough leverage for it to finally catch! From there, securing the bolts and ensuring the tire wasn’t pinched between the rims was a breeze. Now on to the Main Landing Gear! I repeated the same process for the tires and applied the grease to the bearings. I thought securing the axle to the mains would be quick.. it’s only 8 bolts... Well, it seems the predrilled holes from the factory had some alignment issues and I couldn’t get all 4 bolts through. It took me a few hours of light drilling, tapping, removing everything and trying again for it to finally fit. I didn’t want any ‘play’ in the bolts since this is an obvious area of large forces and if there was any movement, it could easily snap a bolt. I finally got one side down and the other side was easier since I knew what I was doing. One thing to note is there is an axle edge spacer that goes between the axle and the main gear to ensure a snug fit. It’s not mentioned in the instructions and I only noticed this after I finally got the bolts to fit, there was a space between the axle and the mains. I put the wedge in and it was a perfect fit! I does look like the supplied bolts (AN4-26a) are a bit too long. I could add 4 washers to the bolt, but that doesn’t seem practical and the bolts will likely hit the wheel spat anyway. The instructions call for AN4-22a, so I’ll have to replace them when I put in my next order with aircraft spruce.. |
Archives
September 2021
Categories
All
|