Brief Description: Fuel line, Air vents, rudder cable fairings, and s
Today I worked 9 hours on what should have been 6 at the most. I started out using some RTV that I procured last week from Aircraft Spruce to seal the air vents. I oozed a layer around the perimeter of the plastic vent and cleco’d them into position. I waited for the RTV to dry and then I riveted the small NAS rivets with the aluminum backing I had made previous. The vent job worked out nicely. I then decided to make the fuel line that goes from the fuel selector valve to the backup electric fuel pump. I had trouble months ago making this piece because of the tight bend near the pump and the floor on the plane. I am still not sure if I have this flaring business down but I did my best. Had to unscrew the lines from the wings to the fuel selector valve, which caused me a problem as one on the fittings pulled loose. I had to trim and flare that fitting in close quarters as I lay in the plane. I did a lot of swearing! I am wondering if I scratched the mating surfaces of the fittings and lines with all the moving and positioning I did? I hope they don’t leak. I then worked on making the little farings for the rudder cables. I was way too anal with getting perfect symmetry in both the shape and hole pattern. When I got what I thought was near perfect fairings, I drilled them to the fuselage only to discover that the lower holes are much to close the stringer on the inside of the plane. I will probably have a difficult time riveting those holes if I don’t elect to use pop rivets? I will wait till I dimple for the # 8 screw that holds the plastic tube that protects the rudder cable. I need to figure out how to dimple this. If I had the standard kit I could have dimpled it before the skin was attached to the fuselage. I will probably drill a hole in one of my bucking bars for the # 8 dimple die and go at it from that standpoint? We will see. Almost forgot, I installed the static ports on the side of the fuselage. These are ports that I bought at Aircraft Spruce. Using these instead Van's method of static ports.
