Carlson Skunk Works

May 31st, 2016

AMF 14H MARANDA SN:1026 Making Sawdust May 31st, 2016

Posted by Roger in AMF 14H Maranda SN1026, news

This weekend was busy, but left some time to work on Sawdust. I started by finishing up the details on the wings, then marked where the jury struts will mount to the struts. Finally, I put together the tool cart that I had purchased at Harbor Freight last December.

My neighbor, Carson, gave me a hand with pulling the wings and organizing the hanger for covering the wings. So at this point I am working on covering the wings.

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The wings are off. The right wing is on wing stands at the back of the hanger. The left wing in on the wing stands to the left of fuselage in the picture. The red tool cart is sitting by the fuselage and is loaded with struts, tools and supplies.

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I borrowed the wing stands from my friend, Fred. They have been used to hold the wings from several planes in the past, including the wings for a primary glider that was built by our EAA chapter before I moved to Kearney. They are kind of like the EAA wing rack, but they are designed to hold only one wing per set. This also provides a platform for rib stitching when I get to that point.

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We moved the left wing to a workbench that I brought out to the hanger. This will give me a good platform for doing the covering.

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The cable for the wing tip strobes is run through the ribs and is secured to each rib with a zip tie. Any place where the internal bracing straps came close to a rib structure I covered the rib structure with plastic tubing. The tubing is intended as a wire organization tool and was purchased in the aircraft materials area of my local Mendards.

The dust and dirt that has accumulated on the wing surface was wiped off. Any sharp edges and uneven areas were smoothed with a fine rasp. Anti chafe tape is being applied at any area where the fabric might wear against an edge.

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The plastic tubing from the pitot and static tubes is run along the strobe cable to the wing root. Each tube is secured to the rib structure separately from the other using zip ties. The aileron control cable is secured to each of the compression ribs with zip ties.

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The next things to do are to flip the wing over and apply the anti chafe tape to the top of the ribs and install the inter-rib bracing tape. I will also apply more anti chafe tape to any sharp edges. Then covering can begin. My biggest issue now is to figure out how to apply the fabric around the pitot static tubes.

I decided to turn the fuselage around, so it is now facing into the hanger. This gives more room to work on the wings.

May 23rd, 2016

AMF 14H MARANDA SN:1026 Making Sawdust May 23rd, 2016

Posted by Roger in AMF 14H Maranda SN1026, news

Things have been moving along. The ailerons and rudder have been covered and painted. The vertical stabilizer is covered and primed. The plane is moved to the new hanger. The cables to the elevator have been built and installed. Yup, things are moving along.

The last thing that I did was to mount the wing tip lights and run the cables for them.

I started by gluing up a wood block from three layers of basswood that I got from Patrick Schutt. I used this wood for the tips of the horizontal stabilizer and elevator, and had enough left over to make up the wing tip light mounting blocks. Patric provide some really nice wood.

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The wing tips are Hoerner tips which really has the ends of the wings cut at a 45 degree angle. The end of the wing is covered with 1.5 mm plywood and the tops and bottom of the wing from the last full rib to the tip are covered with plywood as well.

I purchased the Whelen Microburst II Kit from Aircraft Spruce. These are intended to be installed on the wing ends on a flat vertical surface. Therefore, I needed to build a couple of mounting blocks that would fit securely to the 45 degree wing tip surface and provide vertical surface on which the lights can be mounted.

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Once the wood blank has been glued up, I cut it lengthwise at a 45 degree angle.

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Then I traced around the lights to see how small I could make the finished mounting block.

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Then I cut the block to the final size and rounded the corners with a rasp. Then I marked the wing tips so that I would know where the blocks needed to be mounted. My method of mounting the blocks was to run two pan head screws through the wing tip plywood into each block. I did this by drilling two 1/8 inch holes through the plywood and continued drilling through the plywood on the top of the wing. I then enlarged the holes in the plywood on the top of the wings until they were large enough to allow a screwdriver to access the screws that went into the mounting blocks.

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I held the mounting blocks in place and extended a sharpened pencil through the holes that I drilled and marked the locations of the 1/8 inch holes onto the back of the mounting blocks. I drilled pilot holes into the wood blocks, then mounted them using the screws.

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The wires for the lights come out of the back of the light approximately in the center of things. The cable kit comes with a cable that has a plug connected on one end and a mating plug and pins that need to be crimped onto the wires protruding from the light. The plugs are nearly an inch wide by almost 3/8 inch wide. So I needed to drill holes in the mounting block and wing tip to allow the plugs to reach into the wing for proper connection.

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The lights can now be (temporarily) mounted to the wing tips.

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The cables were run through the wings and secured in place by zip ties. At this point the wings are ready to be removed from the plane for covering. The mounting blocks will be left in place and the fabric will go over them.