Rob and Kelly’s RV-10 N819K

The oil door was one of those miscellaneous tasks we needed to finish.  It’s on top of the cowl and provides access to the dipstick, for checking oil level before flying.

We received our registration back from the FAA.  The turnaround was really quick, so we really didn’t need to do it this early.  There’s really no downside to doing it early, though.

There are a few “miscellaneous” antennas that need to be mounted somewhere.  These are satellite antennas, so they’re small, but I didn’t want to mount them to the outside of the airplane, if possible.  Other people put them on the glareshield (fancy airplane term for “dashboard”), but didn’t like that either.  In the homebuilt world, another popular place is under the cowl.  These satellite signals go through the paint and fiberglass just fine, and this location means they’re completely hidden, which is nice.

I designed and built a shelf for these.  It’s attached in the rear to the firewall using a piano hinge and in the front to the engine mount using an Adel clamp.

The antennas here are:

• GPS antenna for Trutrak ADI (backup instrument)
• GPS antenna for Garmin 696 (large screen moving map)
• XM antenna for XM weather data and radio

Note the antenna for the “main” GPS, with will be used for IFR en route navigation and approaches, was installed on top of the fuselage, in accordance with the installation instructions.  Though I’m sure this one would be fine below the cowl as well, I decided to do it by the book since it’s an “official” GPS.

With the cowl mostly done, we could finish the baffle.  All the aluminum pieces are fit to the engine, so now the fun part: getting a 3/8″ to 1/2″ gap between the top of the baffle and the underside of the top cowl.  This involves many, many iterations of putting the cowl on, checking the clearance all around, marking areas, cutting, checking again.  As you can imagine, there’s a lot to check, and with the cowl on, it’s not always the easiest to see.  To help out, Kelly put paperclips all over the baffle.  That way, when we put the cowl on, it would push down the paperclips.  When we took the cowl off, we could then see exactly how far down it went.

We ended up having to cut quite a bit off to get the fit right.  When we were done, I sanded the edges smooth and was very thankful to be done with this part.

The last real step in the baffle is to attach a rubber material to the top.  This closes the gap between the top of the baffles and the top cowl.  The rubber has to be curved in, so the high pressure above the engine doesn’t push the rubber out and flap against the top cowl.  Kelly pretty much did this herself.

Done!

During the week, with only an hour or two to get things done and not wanting to get dirty, I’ve been doing electrical work.  Below, I’ve installed the ammeter shunt (top) and an ANL current limiter (bottom).

The shunt is what measures the current flowing into or out of the battery, and the current limiter is basically a fuse that will blow out if the alternator malfunctions with excessive current.  They’ll be wired up later.

Speaking of circuit protection, I’ve installed a few of the circuit breakers.  There are fuses behind the panel for most things, but I do have a few pullable circuit breakers for the more critical items that may need to be disabled or reset in flight.

I’m also getting started on the switches.

The cowl is now fit and close to complete.  We had to do more work than just fitting, for example, adding louvers to the bottom (for cooling).

Here I am working on the piano hinges on the bottom cowl.  The hinges attach the top to bottom.

Here’s Kelly standing next to the plane with both the top and bottom cowl installed.  This also gives a good perspective on how large the RV-10 really is.

A closer-up shot.  The towel on the propeller is so we don’t hit our heads on it when standing up near it–that garage really is small.

More giant pieces of fiberglass that need to be endlessly cut, sanded, and fitted.  Yay!  The cowl doesn’t seem too bad, but maybe I’m just desensitized after doing the doors and wheel fairings.  Anyway, not too much noteworthy here.  We did need to mount the propeller temporarily to get the cowl fit correctly.

Here we are working on fitting.

With the engine mounted, we started working on the baffling, which mounts to the engine and routes the cooling air efficiently around the engine cylinders.  This part wasn’t bad–basically just a bunch of pieces of aluminum, which is a nice break from the fiberglass.  Here are a couple pictures of the aft parts temporarily mounted.

Probably the only really annoying part of the baffling so far is bending the inlet ramps, which go in the front.  Bending a large, relatively thick piece of aluminum isn’t much fun.  Here is a picture of me bending as well as one of the finished product.

im

This is about as much of the baffling we can do for now.  The rest requires the cowl (the large fiberglass pieces that cover the engine) to be fit, so on to that.

This weekend was finally the time to mount the engine. The fuselage, in its current position, would require the engine hoist to be on the driveway to mount the engine. Unfortunately, our driveway is uneven and has a decent slope, so we decided to turn the airplane around and do the engine mounting in the garage. With the fuselage on the wheels, moving it around is no problem. I had just recently bought a tow bar made especially for the RV-10, so it was even easier. Kelly had to be on the tail, because without the engine, it was still tail heavy.

Our friends Derek, Brad, Adrienne, and Hugh showed up to help out. We needed to rearrange some more stuff to get ready. We also had to raise the engine crate a little higher to get the hoist under it.

With everything arranged and the hoist attached, it was time to move.

Check out warning number 4 on the load leveler. Not sure what that’s about.

With the engine close and the rubber mounts installed, we just needed to get the bolts in and tightened. Kelly was omnipresent with the camera.

Job done! Here’s a picture of everyone (except Kelly).

Here’s Kelly

Full frontal!

With the landing gear installed, fairings aligned, and us ready to mount the engine, it was time to put the fuselage on the gear.  We used 5 people to lift it on the workbench originally, but since then, we installed the landing gear, which added a ton of weight.  Since we needed to borrow a shop crane to mount the engine anyway, I thought we should use that to lift the fuselage off the table and lower it to the floor.  Kelly’s dad has a friend with one we could borrow, which was fantastic.  Unfortunately, the jack was low on fluid (or something… I don’t know much about hydraulic jacks), so it didn’t go up all the way.  We were able to make it work, though.  Here’s what we did:

• Attach straps from the engine mount to the crane hook.
• Lift the hook on the crane, lifting the fuselage to about 1/4-1/2″ above the workbench.  Remember, the tail is supported on an A-frame ladder, so at this point, all the weight is on the ladder at the tail and the straps on the engine mount.
• Pull the workbench out of the way.
• Lower the crane.  With the ladder in the back, as we lowered the crane, the nose was pointed down more and more.  We took a couple of the elastometers off the nose gear, so that it could pivot upward more than normal, ensuring the main wheels would touch first.  We wanted to make sure we didn’t end up with all the weight on the nose gear.
• With the weight on the mains, we could lift the tail off the ladder and put it on a much lower sawhorse.

There you have it.  We still need to support the tail, as we haven’t installed the engine yet, so it’s really tail heavy.  Here are some pictures of the process.