Thursday 25 January 2018

Un-planned workstop

Sadly I've had to leave work on hold on my RV12 since just after the last post in November.  I started suffering with tennis elbow and shoulder pain and was putting up and trying to keep going, then to make matters worse, fell on the garage stairs and damaged my right hand.  Things are gradually improving so hopefully back to some light jobs in the next few weeks.
I did manage a bit more work on the lower cowling before it all went wrong, and got the painted canopy frame installed and ready for the perspex.

Here are a few pictures of the engine cowling preparation.


Once the two halves of the cowling were trimmed and temporarily pinned to the bulkhead I drilled off the positions for the hings that join the top and bottom halves together.   Here I'm about to rivet the lower left side hinge.


I borrowed this pneumatic squeezer from John at work to aid in riveting, as the tennis elbow precludes using the normal manual squeezers.  Still a bit of a task due to the weight of it with a painful shoulder!

So here are the upper and lower parts fastened together with all side hinges installed and hinge pins cut to size.  I haven't drilled the holes for the cowling-to-bulkhead interface yet - that will wait until the engine is installed so I can ensure the propellor cut-out at the front is in alignment to the spinner and do any additional trimming as necessary.  Looks pretty good so far!

So a view from the right showing the area to cut out for the oil filler/dipstick door.

Here with the upper cowling back on the bench and I've made the opening and fitted the Camlock receptacles.  Note the deliberate mistake? The  Camlock rivets should be parallel to the outer edge of the moulding and not aligned to the diagonal cut-outs in the corners.

Finally with the oil door fitted.  You can see the consequence of mis-aligned Camlock receptacles is that the wings of the Camlock fasteners aren't in line. They'll do for the time being but I plan to change these to stainless steel versions with a screwdriver slot when the aircraft is painted.  I have some more work to do on the oil door as the hinge causes the door to catch on the fibreglass as it's opened, so an additional or thicker packer is required.

Next job is to install the canopy perspex and to lay-up the fibreglass canopy-to-fuselage skirt.

Some unscheduled progress was made yesterday.   My recently delivered Rotax engine is unfortunately subject to a mandatory service bulletin for potentially incorrect push rods.  Having contacted the UK distributor to discuss warranty, they quickly dispatched Andy to inspect it and he changed the faulty parts there and then.  Excellent work CFS Aero!

So here's the engine out of it's box on a work stand.  It should have been installed by now but hopefully that'll still happen in the next month or two.