Twisted: Week 90 - Flaps and remote units tray

Hours to date: 914.25

I didn't make much progress last week - far too busy at work with late nights - then a hangover on the following weekend which slowed me down!

Last weekend was a Bank holiday so I made up for it by putting in 3 good days.

Passing 900 hours...

I feel like I might be over halfway now. That light at the end of the tunnel is a small pin prick - just visible for the first time.

I managed to kill my Dremel as well. Dead Dremel.

Will have to get another one soon. I don't know how you would build a Twister without one.

I was pretty chuffed to see that my alignment of the EFIS was spot on with relation to the wings level attitude (see photo below).

As discussed before that attitude is not adjustable by the EFIS so must be set by the panel position. Same goes for Yaw which is also spot on.

The other angle-critical install was the remote compass for the EFIS - which has to be within 1 degree of Pitch, Roll and Yaw of the EFIS to give an accurate reading.

I am confident I got the Pitch and Roll spot on - confirmed by use of the protractor spirit level (for pitch) and a standard spirit level (for roll).

The Yaw I feel is just a touch out so I will correct this by slightly filling out the holes on the remote compass (forward on one side and back on the other) to shift it to be spot on. The only real way of knowing it is perfect will be to cross check it with the GPS. Something to be done much later on when the plane is outdoors and the GPS has a good signal.

The 'steam' gauge mechanical compass will also be a useful cross check, although not as accurate as the GPS methinks.

For the Radio and Transponder TRIG make a very compact and light unit for the panel itself, then a larger unit with all the guts in it. This has to be mounted somewhere so I have made up a shelf the will go behind the panel and hang off the inside top of the cell.

Some more parts for the electrics arrived too. The brass plates with lots of tabs on it will be the main ground bus. Mounted on either side of the firewall with two large brass bolts connecting them electrically and mechanically.

The battery negative wire will be attached to this large bolt on the non-firewall side. I'm going to use the other bolt on the other side to run a large wire back to my fuse box/main power bus. There are 12 grounds on the fusebox/bus that can be used locally to save on wire and mess.

I also bought a cigarette lighter socket that will power the iPad mini I intend to have on my left knee. The iPad mini will be used for weather, charts and as a backup for navigation (if the GPS dies).

Finally I got around to doing the wing root ends of the flaps.

This all has to be millimetre perfect as the pins will have to line up and fit into the flap actuators (when they are mounted in the wing root).

As you can see I used the flap actuators themselves to make sure the pins line up as the flock sets.

Next little job on that to finish it off is flocking then glassing in the edges of the upper root rib and adding carbon washers over the pins (flocking those in too).

As you can see the pins are comfortably long enough - I figured that the pins can always be made shorter but there is no way to make them longer once they are in.