Trim Servo Continued...

After a small vacation, I got the trim servo plate primed. I massaged the fit of the cover to my liking and cut the opening for the push rod.

Bottom

Top

I'll fill in the cover with Super Fill and get it primed tomorrow.

Kitfox Covering

Worked with Terry on his Kitfox today. We set the bottom covering. Got it all stuck down and rough trimmed. He'll do the final trimming and shrinking tomorrow. It took about 3.5 hrs.

Just finished the bottom cover. Rotated right side up.

Bottom front under the cabin. Rotated the plane, right side up.

Full view of bottom

Trim Servo Cover Continued...

Well after finishing up the cover I realized it wasn't wide enough to allow the passage of the trim servo wires into the void of the elevator (between the fabric). I was concentrated too much the process of making it. So, I needed to start over. Not all bad, I wasn't really happy with the first cover anyway.

I've spent the past week making a new mold and laying up the new part. I'm much happier with they shape, size and finish of this one. However, there were a few voids caused by the resin leaking past my seal again. I was able to fill them with Hysol.

New and old

Waxed and coated with release agent

All laid up with fiberglass

Off mold

Hysol on the rear voids

Hold drilled for wire pass though. Outline of the front of cover. The vertical line beside the servo represents the outside edge of a structural member the wires have to go around.

Cover sitting on the servo. Rear needs to be cut for the push rod.

Trim Servo Cover Continued...

After letting the fiberglass cure over night, I popped it off the mold. Trimmed the edges close with hand shears then took it to the belt/disc sander. Then I covered it with filler and let that cure for several hours. Then the fun began, first I did a rough clean up with a cheese grater and moved on to the 80 grit sanding block and progressively through 120, 220, finishing with 1000 grit paper. The final pic is the part covered in primer ready for paint. Before painting, I'll need to fit it to the servo drilling mounting holes and maybe some sort of weather stripping.

Butt Rib, Windshield and Turtle Deck Brackets

I took a break from the fiberglass work while waiting on some supplies and started working on the remaining butt rib (Left Wing). I needed to get this butt rib fixed in place so I could move on to fitting the windshield bracket. I taped the rib in place with blue painters tape using paint stir sticks as spacers (conveniently 1/8th inch thick), these set up the proper spacing between the butt rib and the first rib in the wing. The skylight spans the cabin and attaches to the butt ribs on each side. Once the butt rib was secured and correctly aligned, I drilled the butt rib standoffs and cleco'd them in place. These will be secured with Hysol and rivets later. I will use lock plates in the butt rib so I will be able to remove them if ever I need to.

The butt rib needed to be set before I could work on the windshield bracket and the turtle deck/skylight bracket because the butt ribs are use to align the other brackets. Once done, I started measuring the windshield bracket to determine what needed to be trimmed from the bracket. After a while I got it to fit correctly. This windshield bracket must fit flush with the butt ribs on either side. So, I laid an angle bracket across the butt ribs and adjusted the windshield bracket so it was perfectly flush with the angle bracket. I drilled and cleco'd the windshield bracket in place.

After finishing with the windshield bracket I moved on to the turtle deck bracket. It needs to be fitted the same way as the windshield bracket, flush with the butt ribs on either side. After trimming to go around cabin frame work, I clamped it into place allowing me to drill for clecos. This was a bit easier because there was less frame work to clear. I still have to clean up the cuts but the rough fit is done.

 I set the turtle deck up on the fuselage to see what I would have to cut to make it fit. This will help in making my template for the acrylic turtle deck. Once I get this in place I can mock up the sides to give me an accurate template used to cut the acrylic.

MOD - Trim Servo Cover

I started attempting to make a trim servo cover out of fiberglass. I cut out and carved a mold out of blue foam some weeks ago and finally got around to trying to fiberglass it. Did some research online about the process. I had to protect the foam from the resin as it would melt it. So, several articles suggested that you cover the foam with plastic wrap (Saran Wrap). I did, and proceeded to layup the fiberglass and resin doing two layers of pretty thick fiberglass weave. Unfortunately, I didn't get enough hardener into the resin on the first layer. It didn't set up well. The second layer I did much better and it did set. However, the first layer allowed some resin to seep through the plastic wrap to the foam melting it.

So, my first attempt melted my mold but, the second layer did set so I think I can use it as the new mold. I also learned that I'll need three good layers of fiberglass to be stiff enough for a cover. This first cover was a little flimsy so I decided to fill it with expanding foam to stiffen it enough to use as a mold. This worked well and after letting it set up over night it is plenty stiff to use as a mold.

Wrapped in plastic, hot glued in place

Hand forming the fiberglass mat before adding resin

First layer of glass and resin

Second layer of glass and resin

Part after curing and cleanup.

Visible air bubbles from incorrect resin mix on 1st layer.

Adding expanding foam, weight to hold it down while the foam expands out the rear

Foam cured, cleaned up ready for round 2...