Rob and Kelly’s RV-10 N819K

The “main gear” is the legs/wheels on the left and right, as opposed to the single wheel in front, and this is what we worked on first.  The gear leg mount is already bolted in the fuselage, so the first step is to insert the gear leg into the mount.  The gear leg is heavy (about 40 lbs of solid steel) and it’s a tight fit in the mount, so it wasn’t exactly easy.

Once the leg is where it’s supposed to be, the single bolt hole in the gear mount needs to be drilled, then the bolt is inserted and fastened.  It’s an AN5 bolt, which is nominally 5/16″ in diameter, but Van’s recommends using a .310″ or 7.9 mm bit, which is slightly undersize, ensuring a tight bolt fit.  With a loose bolt, I suppose the gear could twist in the mount.  Anyway, I think the bit was slightly smaller than it should have been, which made the bolt *really* difficult to get in.  I had to enlarge the hole a little and use a rubber mallet to get the bolt in all the way.  We finally got it to work, though.  Here I am installing the bolt.

While I started on the second leg, Kelly started working on the rest of the gear.  Here she’s bolting some stuff together.

Next up was mounting the wheels.  This is a pain–after putting the wheel on, we had to get just enough torque on the axle nut to keep the wheel from wiggling and the bearing from spinning on the axle, but not so much that there was too much friction on the wheel.  Then, we had to drill holes in the axle for a giant cotter pin to keep the axle bolt from turning.  We’re done now, with both wheels mounted.

Below is a closeup of the wheel area.  The pointy thing on the left is called the axle extension–it’s attached to the outside of the wheel pant (wheel cover).  The plate on the right is attached to the inside of the wheel pant.  You can also see the brakes attached here–it’s a pretty basic disc brake system.

Next up, running the brake lines from the fuselage down to the wheels.  In parallel, we’re starting the wheel pants.  The pants need to be done with the airplane off the ground, so we want to get that done ASAP so we can get the fuselage off the table.

It’s time to mount the landing gear.  The stand the fuselage has been on for the last ~1.5 years is only about a foot of the ground, so to be able to insert the gear legs, we needed to lift it.  After lots of thinking, I figured the best way to do this given the resources we have, is to lift it onto our 5′x2′ workbench.  It’s about 8″ excessively high, but good enough.

To do this, we needed help.  The process basically worked like this:

1. Lift the fuselage off the stand and place the front on our “extra” workbench, while the people in the back held the tail in the air.  About 90% of the weight is on the front, so holding the tail while we did all this wasn’t a big deal.  By the way, the engine mount makes a great hand hold on the front.
2. Get rid of the fuselage stand and put the 5′x2′ workbench in its place
3. Carry the fuselage and place it carefully on the workbench.
4. Center the fuselage on the workbench.
5. Place an a-frame ladder under the tail.

The bottom of the fuselage is curved slightly, so not much of it is actually touching the table.  I was a little concerned about damaging the skin, but we made sure the pressure is near the wing spar and used a towel on the table.  Should be fine.

Much thanks to Ron (Kelly’s dad) and our friends Adrienne and Brad for the help.  There’s no way Kelly and I could have done it ourselves.  We’re guessing the fuselage weighs about 400 lbs. at this point, but really don’t know for sure.

See the post here for our entry on starting the windscreen fairing.  Kelly and I epoxied all those layers of fiberglass cloth in one session.  When we were done, I realized we didn’t do a sufficient job getting all the air bubbles out from between layers.  If this was a structural piece, I’d be a little concerned (though it’d still probably be okay), but for this purpose it’s fine.  I then put on a thick (too thick) mixture of exoxy and microballoon “filler” as the layers of fiberglass tape didn’t leave a smooth curve.  I probably used too much, and much of it sagged, which necessitated a crapload of sanding.  Fortunately Kelly was up to the task!  Seriously, though, she did most of the work on this, and it wasn’t that much fun.  After getting a good shape, we applied a layer of pure epoxy to the top, then did a final sanding to finish.  The fairing is sanded down to almost nothing against the aluminum and plexiglass, so it should look great after it’s painted.

Here’s Kelly posing with her handiwork.

The spinner is the pointy thing attached to the propeller–it’s the forwardmost part of the airplane.  On this airplane, it consists of two aluminum bulkheads (look like discs) attached to the propeller with a fiberglass “point” attached to the bulkheads.

First step is to mount the bulkheads to the propeller.  That’s fairly simple, though you need to read the propeller manual to know the torque value for the bolts.

The fiberglass comes as a solid cone, so you have to carefully create the cutouts for the propeller blades.  The plans say to estimate the fit, cut, measure, cut again, measure, and repeat until there’s about 1/8 inch gap between the fiberglass and blade.  Or, you can use this cutout that Hartzell (the propeller manufacturer) provides: http://s3.amazonaws.com/n819k/8068D_Van’s-Hartzell_Cutout.pdf.  An added bonus is that it also accounts for the blade in all positions, which is important, since the blade twists in its mount depending on different flight conditions.

After the cone is cut out, I made sure the fit was good, then drilled all the screw holes through the cone into the bulkheads.  I also had to create aluminum covers that go “behind” the blades, to ensure a consistent opening around the blade.  Then one of my least favorite jobs–mounting nutplates–which involves drilling rivet holes, countersinking those holes, then riveting the plates on.  Then we were done!  Here are some pictures of the process (and our messy workbench).

We’ve been looking at samples for our interior from Flightline Interiors.  We’ve pretty much decided on what’s pictured below.

“A” is a fake leather that we’ll use on most of the seats and side panels.  “B” is the carpet.  “C” is used for the headliner and the seat centers.

The windscreen fairing is a gradual transition between the top of the fuselage and the windscreen.  It’s made by laying up many layers of fiberglass of various widths.  Here’s a snapshot of the plans, which shows a side view of what the fiberglass layers look like.

Before laying up the fiberglass layers, we had to do a few other things to prepare.  We riveted on some small aluminum “clips” to keep the windscreen from moving.  I then taped off the area where where the fairing will go, cleaned, scuffed, cleaned again, then used some phosphoric acid to etch the aluminum, to improve adhesion of the epoxy.  I then mixed up some epoxy and microballoon filler to fill the small area between the bottom of the windshield and the fuselage top (per the picture above).  Here I am inspecting before applying the filler mixture.

Here I am applying the filler.  It’s dyed black, because we’ll be able to see it through the windscreen from the inside.

While I was working on this, Kelly was cutting all the pieces of fiberglass cloth we’d need to do the fairing.  Not a particularly fun job, as you can see here.

Now it’s time to glue the windsceen.  It’s attached to the fiberglass top and sides with the same glue, Weld-on 10, that we used on the other windows.  On the front, it’s essentially fiberglassed to the aluminum on top of the fuselage as part of the windscreen fairing (the next big step).

Here I am checking the glued joint.  Note the 2×4 and weights on top to hold the windscreen down on the cabin top securely.

We used some strategically placed clamps to hold the winscreen to the cabin top in a few places.  Using too much pressure can cause “crazing” (tiny cracks), so the clamps are actually holding popsicle sticks to the cabin top, and we wedged another popsicle stick between the clamped one and the windscreen to apply a little pressure.

Here are a few rare pictures of both Kelly and me, courtesy of Kelly’s long arm.

Yes, we’d already fit the windscreen last summer, but we recently noticed a sizeable gap between the windscreen and fuselage top, on the right side.  I sanded down adjacent areas to make it sit a little better.  There’s still a small (~ 1/16″) gap, which will be filled by epoxy and covered by the windscreen fairing.  More on that later.

Most of the interior is covered by our interior kit (side panels, carpet, etc); however, there are a few areas that won’t be, especially around where the pink cabin top sits on the aluminum fuselage.  Having finished the fitting of those pieces, it was time to paint.  Here I am masking off the interior, most of which had already been painted, so I didn’t want to get any more primer or paint on it.

I was especially careful to protect the instrument panel.  You can also see the white areas around the door frame, where we filled in the gap between the pink fiberglass and aluminum.

Here it is after paint.  You can’t really see it in the picture, but the results weren’t that great.  There are still some uneven areas, but I think once we have the interior installed and everything else completed, there will be a lot of other stuff to distract people.

Glad it’s done!

The current goal is to get the airplane ready for the engine, so we need to get it up on the landing gear.  Before that, we want to install the windshield, and before we do that, we need to paint the rest of the interior.  We’ve been doing some fiberglass work on the inside, so while the epoxy is curing, we need to do something else.

Here’s Kelly working on the cover that goes between the wing and the fuselage once the wings are attached.

While she was doing that, I worked on the pieces that attach Kelly’s cover to the fuselage.  Each piece comes straight, but needs to be bent slightly to match the curve of the wing.

Later I worked on the aluminum parts of the spinner (the pointy thing on the front of the airplane, covering the propeller hub).  Here they are primed.

I also painted some stuff.  Here are the brackets that hold the door strut to the door, as well as the engine control cable bracket, which holds the throttle, propeller, and mixture controls below the instrument panel.

Lastly, these are the parts that hold the brakes and wheel pants to the main landing gear legs.