Cricket problem solved

Ever since I've been working on the plane out in the hangar, I've been plagued by two things: recalcitrant longerons that have to date proven impervious to every manner of force I've been able to apply in trying to get the angle to open to an apparently unattainable 5.4 degrees, and even more annoying, a cricket in the back corner, hidden behind some piles of detritus that somehow landed in my hangar on moving day seven years ago. I figured the longeron problem was solvable (others have, after all, managed to get it done) but the cricket problem seemed hopeless. He'd go quiet as soon as I got near enough to pinpoint his location, and even had I been able to lay my eyes on him, they're nimble little critters and very hard to catch. Well, let's not dance around the issue; I didn't want to catch him, I wanted to flatten him under the bottom of my shoe.

I stopped by Lowe's after work to look into some of the options available for working on the longerons. I ended up buying a 4 lb. engineer's hammer, thinking someone as smart as an engineer could surely craft a more suitable pounding device than the ridiculous orange monstrosity I had picked up at Harbor Freight. Then I realized that they probably meant a train engineer's hammer, but it didn't matter. It felt much heftier than the orange one. Both are ostensibly 4 lbs. and even given that all sizes and weights of Harbor Freight tools are approximate, the metal engineer's hammer felt much, much heavier. To hedge my bets, I also found a 3/8" steel pipe coupling to use in case the new hammer failed as spectacularly as every hammer that has preceded it has. I even remembered to pick up a length of poly rope to practice tying sailing knots with.

I only forgot one thing: cricket poison.

Back at the hangar, I pounded futilely on the longeron piece which was snuggled under the protective umbrella of the scrap piece that I had cut off earlier. This was a healthy dose of "fail," and it certainly didn't help my mood that the noise of the pounding didn't even cover the mocking chirps of the dratted cricket. Fail, fail, FAIL! I'm started to believe that the problem is not with the hammer; I think it is the resilience of the wooden top of the workbench. It was absorbing all of the energy.

Humbled by my inability to make even the least bit of progress on the longeron and getting pretty close to going absolutely homicidal on that accursed cricket, I decided to try the vise/pipe coupling method. If that didn't work, well, I'd just go home and mow the yard. Here's the set-up:

The coupling. Naturally since it was Lowe's, it was nowhere near where it should have been on the shelf if they were using any numbering system familiar to an inhabitant of planet Earth, but at least it was in a bag with a bar code on it so they'd know the price of it at the checkout. The odds against that are so high that I can't fathom them. Someone must have snuck it in from Home Depot.

Being a bit shy about experimenting with the long longeron piece, I tried the short sacrificial piece first. With everything in place, I cranked and cranked and cranked on the vise until I could crank no more.  I took the part out, measured it against the angle measuring doohickey, and found that with my extreme efforts I had managed to successfully preserve a pristine 90 degree angle.

That was it. The big guns were coming out. One. More. Try. I put the coupling and the scrap back in the vise, cranked and cranked and cranked until I could crank no more. Then I took the bright neon orange mallet and whacked the hell out of the vise cranky thingy. Again. And again. And again. Then I took the scrap out and measured it against the 95.4 angle on the angle measuring doohickey:

SUCCESS!!

As I was patting myself on the back (figuratively) and enjoying (somewhat) the enthusiastic cheering of the cricket, I noticed that I had an audience. I had almost stepped on a robin. She was completely unafraid of me and hopped around behind me, watching what I was doing. I tried shooing her out a few times, but she'd just go sit under a workbench or the big toolbox until I stopped, then come out again. I decided to ignore her and deal with evicting her later.

Back to work, I loaded up the longeron for the angle-opening process.

I went through the same cranking, cranking, cranking, pounding, whacking, beating process again. It was hard to see if I was making progress without having to remove the longeron from the vise, so I just measured with the piece of scrap to see how much progress I had made.

I finished up the longeron and decided to call it quits for the night. Emotionally drained and a little tired of the longeron bending, I did some work on the fuel system that I had discussed with loyal reader Joe from Utah.  That wasn't much fun either and when I finally got it done and realized that I was drenched in sweat, I decided to finish up and head home. All that was left to do was round up the robin and herd her out of the hangar.

She was nowhere to be found. And as I was looking for her behind boxes and under tables and failing to find her anywhere, I realized something.

The chirping of the cricket had stopped.

I hope she enjoyed the meal.

Culminations and Beginnings

It finally happened. I reached the inevitable culmination of the period of time that I will be able to build the RV-12 in my basement. I stretched it out as far as I could by doing the rudder pedals and fuel lines before section 23, but those are both done now. Section 23 is the beginning of a new phase of building, where of a necessity everything will be done in the hangar. It wasn't a completely painless transition; a lot of tools and partially completed pieces of airplane, along with the very long wing spars, had to be loaded up and moved. It turns out that the fuselage section will fit nicely in the back of a Toyota Tundra, but the wings spars not so much. The spars aren't heavy, but they're a pain to move because they're unwieldy and don't balance the way you think they will. There is definitely a heavy end.


A lot of rearranging and housecleaning (I've been in that hangar for a decade - stuff piles up) was required in the hangar to make room for everything and spiffy it up to make it a more pleasant environment. All in all, I think I spent two or three days getting fully situated.

I've also been dreading the beginning of section 23 because it starts with forming the longerons. A longeron is:

In aircraft construction, a longeron is a thin strip of wood, metal or carbon fiber, to which the skin of the aircraft is fastened. Longerons are attached to formers (also called frames), in the case of the fuselage, or ribs in the case of a wing, or empennage. In very early aircraft, a fabric covering was sewn to the longerons, and then stretched tight by painting it with dope, which would make the fabric shrink, and become stiff.

Longerons often carry larger loads than stringers and also help to transfer skin loads to internal structure. As stated above longerons nearly always attach to frames or ribs. But stringers often are not attached to anything but the skin, where they perform the duty of preventing the skin from deforming, which would create stress risers that would destroy the structural integrity of the monocoque. It is not uncommon to have a mixture of longerons and stringers in the same major structural component.

Sure, whatever. On an RV-12, there is one longeron per side, and it has to follow the curvature of the fuselage as it bends around the cockpit. It is fashioned from a straight piece of angle aluminum. Thousands of words have been written about the difficulties in fashioning longerons, so as I am the first in line to put off something I don't really want to do, I found a different way to occupy myself for a couple of days.

That story starts way back before I started building the RV-12. I needed a smaller project to test my mettle. Hours and hours went into deciding what to build, dozens of blog postings were written as I searched far and wide for a suitable project, and I eventually landed on the idea of building a kayak. I don't remember how long it took to build, but it was probably five or six months. It turned out pretty well, in my opinion.

It's great for paddling down the Big Darby, but I eventually got it in my head that I'd like to be able to go to other places. The Darby is close by and it was easy to have someone help load the boat onto the car, drop me off at the river, and pick me up downstream a few hours later. Going further away was more difficult in that I needed someone to go with me, but no one would want to sit around for a few hours while I was out paddling around. I solved that problem by buying another kayak. 

That worked out well, but I've recently had a relapse. I've always liked sailing, and having experienced the effort required to traverse a large reservoir paddling against the wind, I decided I'd rather have the wind as a friend rather than an enemy. I rekindled my interest in sailing. I managed to catch a healthy dose of 'want' for a sailboat. It's not exactly out of the blue; it's just been lying dormant for a few years. Meanwhile, neither kayak has seen the water this year. I decided to sell the kayaks and buy a sailboat. That was only a temporary decision, lasting only as long as it took for me to realize that I couldn't part with the boat that I had built. I set my sights a little lower and decided to sell just the guest kayak and see how much sailboat that I could buy with the proceeds. I thought it would be easy since I only want a simple boat that I can rig in just a few minutes and sail by myself.

And so it transpired that I sold the kayak Friday evening, and went to look at a potential sailboat on Saturday afternoon. The boat I went to look at is a Force 5. It's less that 14' long, can be rigged in just a few minutes, and can be sailed by a crew of me. The asking price was within budget too. What could go wrong?

Well, you know me. Plenty can go wrong! The seller had it all rigged and ready to go by the time I got to the reservoir. All we had to do was get the boat into the water. But rather than tow it up to the boat ramp to be launched, he suggested that we just carry it down to the water. I think that would have worked out okay except for one thing: there was a foot and a half step to go down. As we were bringing the boat down the step, he let it drop and there was a resounding 'CRACK" as the rudder split. 

I'll never forget what he said next. "Well, that was the product of a bad idea!"

The break in the rudder is nothing that can't be fixed, but there was also a little leakage around the tunnel the centerboard goes through. That too can be fixed with a little work, but I decided that I'm just not looking for a fixer-upper. I have longerons to bend, after all. He had another prospective buyer coming to look at it that might be more interested in doing the required repairs, so I just told him to go ahead with that deal. Meanwhile, I'm foraging around the house looking for other stuff to sell so I can afford a newer boat. I have my eye on this Zuma 13-footer up in Sandusky:

The seller hasn't gotten back to me with an answer to my question as to whether he has sold it yet or not, and I'm not in a terrific hurry anyway since my new trailer hitch for our Subaru still needs to be delivered and installed.

That leaves me with no options but to start on the longerons. As I mentioned, there have been thousands or words written about easier ways to do the longerons than the method provided in the build manual, but I want to at least try the Van's way first. The first step looked easy: measure and cut the provided angle aluminum to 82 3/8" (I think - I'm going from memory on that). Well, that really was easy. Tape measure, band saw.

The mathematicians in the crowd will have noticed that I put my mark at the 84 3/8" mark. I do that because I start my measurement at the other end at the two inch mark. It's more reliable that way because of the folding claw thingy on the other end of the tape measure.

The next step is so easy that one begins to wonder what all of the fuss was about. All you have to do is measure and mark some spots on the longeron that will be used as start and stop marks for certain bends and twists. One suspects that it is the bends and twists that cause all of the heartache. 

One suspects correctly.

In any event, I measured and marked.

Then we come to the innocuous direction, "Open the angle of the longeron an shown." What is shown is that I need to open the 90 degree angle to 95.4 degrees. Heh, only 5.4 degrees. A pittance. The method shown looks easy enough: just put the angle on the work bench with the open end down and whack it with a rubber mallet. Continue whacking until you have opened the angle a measly 5.4 degrees. What could be easier? I set my angle measuring doohickey to somewhere in the neighborhood of 95.4 degrees and put it on the angle to see how far I would have to whack.

Okay, then, start the whacking!

I pounded and pounded and pounded. Then I measured again.

This continued for half an hour. No progress whatsoever. I really wanted this to work, mostly because the PSTRV had stated unequivocally that this method works. Perhaps, I thought, the problem was that I was only using a 2 lb. hammer. Maybe I just needed more mass. More velocity would work too, but I was already giving it all I had. Nothing for it but a trip to Harbor Freight. Wearing that shirt. A trip that would be fraught with peril, what with me being dressed like a cabana boy. 


Harbor Freight had a 4 lb. mallet on sale, and no one even noticed my shirt. Somewhat rebuffed, I had to revert to calling attention to it myself. As I was at the checkout counter, I told the girl running the register that today was my lucky day because I had begun to despair that I would never be able to find a hammer that matched my shirt.


So it was back to whacking on the longeron, but this time I was able to double the force applied on each whack.

See what I mean about matching my shirt? What an amazingly gauche color for a hammer! (Looks good on a shirt, though, right?)

I pounded and pounded and pounded. Then I pounded some more. I thought that surely I had made some progress, so I reset the angle measuring doohickey to 90 degrees to check my progress.

Progress = 0.0.  Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Bupkus. A complete goose egg. In other words, the PATRV is either superhuman or wrong. This method doesn't work. Oh, I supposed I could keep trying bigger hammers. But I think instead that I will try some of the suggestions provided by others that have been though this.

I also had a hard time getting the 90 degree angle on the end of the longeron to open up- the soft hammer method simple didn't budge it. Here's what I wound up doing: step 1. Take the ten inch or so piece that you cut off the longeron to trim it to length and place it over the angle that you want to open up (this will protect the longeron from the next step) Step 2. I used a short 3# sledge hammer to beat directly on to the scrap piece on top of the longeron (as an anvil, I placed the longeron on top of my table saw cast iron top). You will really have to apply some force to get it to budge, but the srap piece will keep it from being otherwise deformed.

 I'm not too keen on that idea, and not just because I'd have to buy another hammer. It seems almost too brute force. And there would seem to be some risk involved. It wouldn't be hard to destroy the aluminum. I'm going to keep that idea in reserve and try this one first:

I used a 3/4 inch pipe coupling inside of the angle and squeezed it with a vice. Check it with a square and there should be about 1/16 of inch gap at the vertex.

That idea has a problem too in that it is contingent on finding a 3/4 inch pipe coupling. I'll try Lowe's for that.

I'm stuck for now, but I will stop by Lowe's tomorrow to look for a piece of pipe. I've been wanting to stop by there anyway in order to pick up a couple of lengths of rope so I can start practicing sailing knots. 

It's a beginning.

Back from Oshkosh

It was a long week, but it flew by (so to speak). My annual shopping spree netted four cases of Phillips 20w-50 oil and a Dynon D-6 for the RV-6, and a set of stubby wrenches for the RV-12. Darned if I didn't forget to get a set of nut drivers, though. Shamefully negligent, that. There were a handful of RV-12s there and I looked at each of them. Other than paint, they all look pretty much alike which is, of course, to be expected. I have to confess that I did look at the belly skins of a couple them to see how the edge breaking looked, something I swore that I wouldn't do.

With hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of airplanes there, I also spent some time just walking around looking at paint jobs. I'm still leaning towards a vintage air racer look - I really like that era. I'm sure it was a lot like early auto racing where fatal accidents were more common in any given race than not, which would make them very difficult and painful to watch, so it's lucky for me that my interest in them has the benefit of being viewed through the lens of nostalgia. From eighty years away, it looks like a glamorous, liberated era of pre-meddlesome government flying. The design of the planes is crude by today's standards, but is attractive and artful in the way a classic painting is. Face it, if the Mona Lisa were painted today, she'd have to be soaking in a jar of urine to be considered art. Back then the artistic flare was more subtle and evidenced in small details rather than in grand, swooping forms and gestures.

That level of artistic craftsmanship is by no means dead in certain areas. Where it thrives today is in one of the last bastions of aviation freedom, the Experimental category. While you won't see a lot of innovation and flare in the RV-12 world, a world in which we straddle the divide between regulatory rigidity and unfettered freedom to build what we want, you will still see in in the rest of the Experimental fleet. You will see it in spades in airplanes like this one, the 2010 Grand Champion kit built:

You can get a feel for the astonishing effort that goes into crafting an aircraft like that by viewing it from a distance, but it is the close-up details that really tell the story. There are hundreds of examples, some as seemingly mundane as the custom fuel caps. Every single part of that airplane was built or modified to be the best it could be. In my opinion, the very definition of art is beautiful artifacts created by supremely talented and dedicated people.

So, there I go, off on a tangent. Back to the paint schemes. Here are a few pictures that fit with the general look I will be going for, absent in all but one case the required distinctive logo somewhere on the side of the fuselage.

None of that will ever come to fruition if I don't get back into the business of building an airplane, so to that end I spent the last couple of evenings on finishing the fuel system. Tonight I put the final line into place. The last line to go in was the long length of 1/4" tube that runs from the firewall shelf back to the bulkhead fitting. Once installed, this line completed the fuel return line. I learned a little bit about the Rotax 912 up at Oshkosh and now know why a return line is necessary.

The Rotax is a low displacement engine relative to the normal Lycoming and Continental type engines found in most planes, my RV-6 included. More horsepower can be gained in two ways: increase the displacement of the engine, or increase the RPM of the engine. Or both, if you're made of money. The older engines have higher displacement but turn at lower RPMs. They turn relatively slowly because if they turned any faster, the tips of the propellors would approach the speed of sound and there is a whole lot of drag at those speeds.

The Rotax takes a different approach. It is a smaller, lighter engine with lower displacement and it makes up for the loss of horsepower by increasing the RPM. A lot. But what about the prop going too fast? Well, the Rotax has a gearbox called a PSRU: Prop Speed Reduction Unit. (I might be making that up - you can never tell with me) The engine runs fast (5,000 RPM), but because of the gearbox, the prop turns at a more sedate speed and avoids the high speed drag.

Running the engine that fast creates a lot of heat. If you shut the engine down and all of that residual heat causes the fuel in the fuel lines to boil, you get vapor lock. Good luck starting that engine, Bub. So what Rotax does is let the fuel in the lines vent itself back to the fuel tank through the return line.

Or so I understand. It doesn't really matter; the return line is in the plans, so I put it in.

Speaking of the plans, the directions for this particular line left me in a haze of what-duh-heck-are-they-saying?? The drawing was no help either; it seemed to show a complex pair of bends where the directions said there was a simple 90 degree bend. Well, a picture may be worth 1000 words, but I'm not sure even that many words could have described what was going on here. I finally just decided if the words say "make a 90 degree bend," well, that's what I'd do.  It worked out fine. So here's how it went.

First, remove the rudder pedals. They're just in the way. I took them out and set them back in the finished-but-not-yet-attached pile.

I cut a length of line a few inches longer than specified so as not to come up short. The plans suggest marking a line 14-ish inches to mark the start of a 90 degree bend. That's not the way my tube bender works, so that line would be useless, save for decorative value; I just made a bend that left me 14 inches of tubing to go up through the firewall shelf. That leaves about five or six feet of tube that has to be fed through the bushings and back out through the inspection port in the belly. Luckily, the tube bends easily.

I wrapped the flaperon mixer (I know the magic behind that thing now, having seen a completed one at Oshkosh. I'll share that with you some day) with duct tape to keep it from scratching, dinging, or gouging the fuel tube.

It took a few trips from the front of the plane to the bottom in order to get the tube to come out through the inspection port.

With the full length of the tube installed, I measured, eyeballed, guestimated, and SWAGed my way through cutting the excess length on each end to fit, flaring the ends, and installing the nuts to the various fittings. I installed the clamp that holds it into place on the firewall, a job that would have gone more smoothly if I had chosen the correct size screw out of bag 2727. For future reference, it's a stubby, fat little guy with a big head.

Insert favorite Napoleon joke here.

That's it for the fuel system. The longerons get bent next. I talked to a few people at Oshkosh about how it's best done but got no consistent answers. It's just something I'll have to work through.

I knew this would happen

Remember how I needed to order the fuel nipple that would pass fuel through the firewall and into the back of the gascolator because I had failed to do a complete enough inventory? Ans remember how I was missing two of the 3/8" sleeves to hold nuts onto flared 3/8" tube? Well, I knew it would turn out that these parts were, in fact, included in the kit and I had done all of that ordering of replacement bits and pieces for naught.  Well, I was right, and I was wrong. I found the sleeves.

The nipple has not yet been found, but its replacement finally arrived from Van's. You may also remember that I had attempted to order the nipple from Aircraft Spruce, but ended up getting the wrong size. Why, then, you ask, did you not just order it from Van's in the first place? Well, consider this: shipping from Aircraft Spruce was $1.28. Shipping from Van's was $8.50. They annoy me this way. Van's typically provides top-notch customer service, but they have yet to provide customer-friendly tools to allow the purchaser to make an informed decision regarding shipping method. In my opinion, that is something they could and should fix.

Do I seem a little crabby tonight? Eh, the paying job has a way of wearing me down towards the middle of the week. Some days go smoothly, others are pockmarked with unwanted interruptions, meetings that inevitably dump ever more work onto my crowded platter, and a crappy commute both ways. Two out of three, today. One bright point though was my sharing of an original, piquant, and pithy insight in one of the meetings: "The fact that I have a hidden agenda may make me duplicitous, but it does not follow that it makes me wrong." I don't think it worked, though. I ended up with the additional work anyway.

Nothing more relaxing than twisting a nipple, I figure, so I treated myself to a little shop time. You may recall that the hole that I drilled for the gascolator looked like it might have been a little off-center. Well, it was. It only took a little filing to get it rounded out to where it needed to be. Two bolts later, the gascolator was attached.

That was the final step in the outgoing fuel system. Now for the return line! The return line starts (well, the fabrication of it starts) at the fuel tank, follows the supply line around a little bit, and branches away to feed down to the bulkhead fitting that I enjoyed installing last Saturday. Because it is only 1/4" diameter tubing, it's a little tricky to get it to follow the 3/8" diameter around turns because the turn radius is a bit tighter. Or so it seemed to me; it's just as likely that I screwed up the math again. Either way, I found that the best thing to do was to be very careful to get the separation distance correct where the two tubes make their vertical climb up to where the fuel tank will be and just eyeball the rest. The two tubes will be clamped together for part of their run and I found it quite helpful to clamp them together early in the process to help maintain the required 1 5/8" separation.

The clamps are quite simple: they're just hose clamp and rubber tube.

I used the scrap of paper with the two Sharpie(tm) marks to set the spacing between the vertical tubes and used the first clamp to hold them in place. Then I just made the bends needed to shape the return tube to the path of the supply line. The hardest part was figuring out the bend required to angle the return line down to attach to the bulkhead fitting. I gave myself a few extra inches of tube to work with, and through a process of trial and error that saw the paired tubes in and out of the fuselage a dozen times, I finally got the length right, the tube flared (with the nut and sleeve on it!!), and the assembly installed for what will hopefully be the last time.

And now it's time for dinner!

Conniptions

It's beginning to dawn on me that there is a reason that people buy airplanes already built. It's just for the fuel systems, I think.

Having finished the rudder pedals, it was back to the fuel system. But a little housekeeping would be needed first. It's been awhile since I've straightened up and it was getting hard to find things that I had just set down moments before.

It's a cluttery process, this airplane building. Every tool has its place, but it seldom visits it. After a little rearranging, I was ready to start.

I still don't have the nipple for the gascolator, but I did somehow manage to order the correct sleeves so I could finish the fuel supply line that runs from the fuel tank to the fuel pump. I had already made the first 90 degree bend in that line, but progress came to a screeching halt when I went to get the nut sleeve from the parts bag. As it turns out, even if the sleeves hadn't been missing, I was in for a rude awakening. You see, in my fervor to get the first 90 degree bend up tight to the end of the tube (as shown in the apparently fictional rendition in the plans) I hadn't put the sleeve that I didn't have on the tube. Had I done so, I would have realized that the flaring tool wouldn't work with the short length of tube left after making the bend. With the sleeve pushed back as far as it would go, the end of the tube fell 1/8" short of where it needed to be for the flaring tool to work. BAM! Two feet of aluminum tube tossed aside as ruined.

Fortunately for me (but not so much for the fellas I was going to donate my extra fuel line to - better order some, Kyle) I had a lot left over from the spare length that I had bought. I rolled out another two feet (plus two inches, just in case), put the nut and sleeve on and made the flare, then did the first 90 degree bend. Which, oddly enough, is the exact order written in the directions. Imagine! Still, my tube bender can't get the bend where Van's wants it, but the extra two inches of tube I had to work with would cover the extra distance the tube would have to run. And the best news is that there would still be enough tube left to give at least a couple of feet to Kyle.

For the second 90 degree bend, I did the measuring to find the location of the 'L' line as specified in the instructions that came with the tube bender. That bend went perfectly. Then there is a slight fifteen degree bend that I had to do by eyeballing - the tube bender instructions are notably mute on the topic of bends less than 45 degrees. That left only one more bend: another 90 degree bend that would turn the line up from the plane of the first three bends to attach to the bottom of the fuel tank. I measured an 'L' line, very, VERY carefully made sure that I was bending in the right direction (it's surprisingly easy to go the wrong way), and made the bend. I set the finished line down on the plans and found the the last bend was about 1/2" out of position. Argh! That's way more than can be waved away, besides which using the extra length of tube to get the bend to the wrong location had eaten up enough tube that the vertical part would be too short to reach the tank.

Remember the old adage "measure twice, cut once?" I've amended it for fuel line fabrication: "Measure twice, bend once, start over."

I grabbed the last of my tubing, made the flare with the nut and sleeve installed, made the first 90 degree bend, measured the 'L' line for the second degree bend, and confidently made the second 90 degree bend in the wrong place. Yep. The wrong place. I got something wrong in either marking the 'L' line or getting it positioned in the tube bender and the distance between the first and second 90 degree bends ended up being too far. Desperate, I decided to try to save the tube by making the fifteen degree bend a 30 degree bend, my thinking being that the vertical 90 degree bend only had to be in the right point in space, no matter how convoluted its path in getting there.

That seemed to work. If I could only make the third 90 degree bend in the right place this time, all would be well. I didn't bother with an 'L' line this time, that method having failed me twice already. I eyeballed the last bend and very, VERY carefully ensured that I was bending in the right direction, drove to KFC for a bucket of chicken to sacrifice at the altar of all deities affiliated with tube bending just to increase my chances of getting it right, and made the bend.

Success!

Well, you'll have to take my word for it. All of the stuff described above is hidden under the baggage floor.

Flush with victory, I went on to the next step. With the fuel delivery line completed, I now have to build the fuel return lines. It would seem that not all of the fuel that leaves the tank ends up getting burned, or at least not on that particular trip. Some apparently gets returned to the tank. Not as much as leaves the tank, though; these are 1/4" lines, not the 3/8" of the delivery lines.

Step 1: put a fitting through a bulkhead. A bulkhead that is now accessible only through an inspection port in the belly skin. The belly skin that hasn't always been there. It's the belly skin that I put there. I put it there when I was told to. You know what would have been nice? If I had also been told to put this fitting in before putting the belly skin on. It would have taken two minutes. Instead it took hours.

Putting it through the bulkhead wasn't so bad.

Getting a nut and washer tightened onto the other side was. It ended up taking hours and giving me a painful case of conniptions. Whatever those are. I think it's something my grandparents had, back in the day. We get vaccinated for it now, but even modern medicine has its limits.

The first problem that I ran into was that I needed a way to hold the fitting in place while I wrenched on the nut. I tried having Co-pilot Egg hold it, but she couldn't get enough of a grip on it. Also, when she held it flush the corners of the flats on the nut would hit the belly skin and I wouldn't be able to turn it. I was at a loss. It was time for the last resort, which is to search the forums on the Vans Air Force web site to see if anyone else had run into this problem. Someone had. The rest had been smart enough to put the thing on before riveting on the belly skin.

Show-offs!

The trick is to hold the fitting in place with a pair of needle-nosed vice grips clamped to the side of the bulkhead. Then you go to Harbor Freight and buy a set of Crow Foot (I think they're Native American technology, going by the name) wrenches.

With the vice-grips holding the fitting, I was able to reach up into the inspection port with the Crow Foot wrench and tighten the nut. It still wasn't easy, but it was manageable.

All I have to do now is see if those clever Crow Foot indians ever came up with a cure for the conniptions.

So, where ya been?

If it seems like it's been awhile since I've worked on the plane, well, it has been. It's been one of those weeks. Sick one day, then a day when I was too burned out from the paying job where my already limited patience had been worn down to a paper-thin veneer and the miserable accident-strewn ordeal getting home in a deluge, one evening spent in front of the computer ruminating (yes, ruminating! Can ya believe it??) about my idea for next year's personal vacation (in lieu of a third consecutive Oshkosh), and the day that I decided to brave the shop and put the replacement nipple fitting from Aircraft Spruce on the gascolator? Wrong size. Got fed up, ordered another, this time from Van's, and called it a day. If the one from Van's is also the wrong size, then they printed the wrong part number of the plans. Cross your fingers, because I'm gonna be some kind of irate if that happens!

Tonight, though, all conditions were favorable. I haven't received the part from Van's, but I did still have a little more work to do on the brake lines. There were two sets left to do: the pair that run from the left side master cylinders down to the wheel brakes, and the pair that run from the right side cylinders up to the fluid reservoir. I chose the long pair to do first because they would be the bigger challenge. Better to get them while fresh, I figured. These lines would be a little trickier since two of the nuts would have to be installed with the lines already installed in the plane. The order of business would be measure and cut the lines, install a nut on each, feed the lines through three bulkheads from the back of the fuselage to the front, install the nuts on the front of the lines, restrain the lines with an Adel clamp, and screw the nuts onto the fittings on the master cylinders.

The measuring and cutting were easy, as was the installation of the nuts. The feeding of the lines through the bulkhead was easy once I had decoded the correct holes to feed them through from the "looks backwards to me" drawing in the plans. That left the nuts and the Adel clamp to be installed. The nuts were only tricky because they had to be done in the more limited confines of the fuselage.

Each of the lines needed to be measured to the point where they would be clamped in place. 

I've always hated Adel clamps, but this one at least had the benefit of being easy to get at. It will not always be thus.

Screwing the nuts onto the master cylinders was trivially easy. So was the fabrication and installation of the other two lines.