Stick Grips

The stick grip selection was surprisingly a difficult choice. It seems like just another plane piece until you really think about it. It is more than that. It is the connection between the pilot and the plane, and it deserves some thought and attention (and class). I really thought I was going to go with the Infinity Aerospace grips, but then after internally debating it for a couple of weeks I decided that it felt a little cheesy. I think the Infinity grips are cool and all, but this isn't a fighter jet.

There are loads of options out there and I started to gravitate towards the wood ones. The problem with the wood ones is that I feel like wood would be out of place based on all of the carbon fiber that is going to be in the interior.

Guy over at Pioneer Aviation had a good balance between the Infinity grips and some of the other wood grips that are out there. I had Guy custom stain me some maple grips in a light grey. I got the PTT, high-hat, autopilot disconnect, and another random button that I am not sure what I am going to wire to yet.



Guy was really great to work with and I am nothing but pleased with these beauties!

Trim Wiring

My tail section came with a Ray Allen trim servo for pitch trim, continuing that I recently ordered another trim servo and roll trim bracket. I also recently ordered my stick grips with a 4 way high-hat and now it is time to start planning what wires I will need to put in place to control everything. I think I will be going with a G3X system (to include autopilot) as well as a VP-X electronic circuit breaker controller.

With this mix of electronics it is time to figure out what controls what and what else do I need from a trim and autopilot perspective. My first question was do I need a safety trim? In looking at the G3X system it looks like the preferred approach is to wire the trim servos through the GSA28 autopilot servos. While the VP-X system has safety trim built in, per their install manual, when you install GSA28s with a VP-X you configure the VP-X to disable the variable speed trim functionality. If you dig deeper into what the GSA28s are capable of everything makes a little more sense.

The Garmin servo provides a built-in interface to drive trim servos at no extra cost. When the autopilot is off, the servo provides speed scheduling for the manual trim commands. When the autopilot is on, the servo adjusts to constantly keep the aircraft trimmed. 

What does all of this mean? When the power is removed from the servos, speed scheduling is disabled and the trim commands are passed directly through the servos to the trim motors. Auto trim is not functional when the autopilot is disengaged, and manual electric trim via the stick hat is never disabled, but if you attempt to manually trim the plane when the autopilot is engaged, the autopilot will disengage to honor your request.

It is always your job to trim the plane when the autopilot is disengaged regardless of whether the servos are powered on (and providing speed scheduling) or off and the trim motor drive is passed through without speed scheduling. In general, with these systems, your servos will always be powered, even when you are not using the autopilot.

That seems pretty straight forward and confirmed by the VP-X install manual:

So I started thinking more about that and I got a fairly uncomfortable feeling. Not that I don't trust Garmin, but I don't really trust anyone. I especially don't trust electronics that I did not assemble. If you look at the wiring diagram above you quickly realize that in the event of an autopilot power failure you loose control to your trim. On the RV-10 there is no manual trim wheels so you would be SOL. How can that be? Well... Reading more into the Garmin manual I found this:

In the event that power to the GSA 28 is removed, a fail-safe system connects the trim input switch directly to the trim motor. In this condition, the trim switch powers the trim motor directly and the motor runs at its full speed when the switch is pressed. The same condition also occurs if a trim switch and motor are connected to the GSA 28, but the trim control function is disabled.

Well that makes sense. The next question is how does one wire in the trim switches. I would prefer having both control sticks have full control. I am not sure why other than I like symmetry. In the GSA28 install section you will find a the following note:

So looks like I should be thinking about a GAD 27 as I select my avionics. It is a $500 dollar unit that appears to have a bunch of functionality that I do not need. I went back to the VP-X manual and it looks like there is a trim mixer in that device. So assuming I disable all of the VP-X trim safety systems perhaps I can use the VP-X to mix my trim and G3X to provide auto-trim and speed scheduling. Other than that I still have to check to see if the G3X system has any form of runaway protection.

Anti-Rotation Plates

I still have not decided if I am going with a factory new or something like a BPE engine. I did speak with BPE the other day and I told them I am just about to close up my fuel tanks. They told me regardless of my engine choice that it would be a good decision to install fuel return lines into my tank just in case I ever end up with electronic fuel injection. In the case that I go bone stock, I can just cap these connections off, and that seems like some pretty wise advice.

I plan on putting 3/8s AN fitting near my vent line in order to service fuel return. This basically looks just like the vent line, but with a larger fitting to match the flow of the pick-up line. I looked around on Vans for a while, but I did not see an anti-rotation plate for 3/8s fittings. Back to the mill!



There is nothing really earth shattering here. I drilled a couple of #33 holes to have a close fit for some 4-40 screws to hold down the sheet to a scrap delrin block. I will later drill these #33 holes to #30 in order to rivet the plate to the end rib on the tank. From there I milled out a hex pattern to accept the AN fitting.



About the only annoying thing here is that I don't have a CNC. I have gotten fairly decent at running 45 degree lines by hand, but 60 degrees I have yet to master.

PVPV-D Parking Brake Bracket

I want to put a parking brake into the plane. I looked around what others were doing and the Matco PVPV parking brake seems to be pretty standard. So much so that airward sells a bracket for the brake. I have no issues with the airward bracket, but I do have a mill in the basement and this seems like a pretty low stress project for when it is too cold to work in the shop.

I started with building a solidworks model of the PVPV-D from the mechanical drawings. The drawings call out that you need 27.5 degrees of deflection on each side of the "up" position to go from on to off. I built the axial limits on the model stop at 30 degrees on each side.






From there I designed a bracket around the PVPV-D that will:

• Securely mount the valve to the firewall
• Allow the replacement of the valve
• Give 30 degree end stops on the arm travel
• Hold the control cable

After the design stage I moved over to the mill and faced a hunk of aluminum. I have a TIG welder so I plan to build this in 2 pieces so I don't have to hog out 3 square inches of aluminum. I drilled and tapped the parking PVPV-D mounting holes with a 10-32 tap.

 

I am still waiting on my fuselage kit to arrive so for the time being I only placed the two valve mounting holes, and none of the firewall mount holes.

 

At this stage I forgot to keep on taking photos. The second piece I machined was the vertical bracket that provides the end stops and cable holding. I need to purchase a cable yet, so for now, I am going to keep the project in this state until I get the rest of the pieces. I still have a lot of metal to get rid of, but from a proof of concept, the bracket is working.

More Fuel Tanks

Not too much to talk about lately. I have been spending my time working through the fuel tanks. I went back and re-read my last post. I guess a couple of things have changed since then. On the first couple of ribs of the right tank I went with the cleco, cure, and then wet rivet method. I ended up not really liking that method. I started to find the riveting of the ribs while wet quicker and cleaner. I know that sounds counter intuitive given all the complaints about that process, but I like it. It goes quickly, and I do think it pulls the skins to the ribs in a more desirable way.

One of the other interesting things was the right tank fuel sender rod bends. I remember a couple of people complaining that the float hits either the stiffeners or the vent line and that you have to make a couple of bends to get around this. I did not find this to be the case. I started with 3/32 tig rod and made sure I had my bends just right.



After I got everything where I wanted I bent the real rod and checked the clearance and travel. According to the multi-meter I had full travel and there were no clearance issues with the stiffeners or the vent.

        

Buying a partial RV

When I started looking into RVs I was set on starting from scratch. I am a fairly picky person and I could not imagine dealing with someone else's work and potential mistakes. That said, having found a partially complete project from a builder who had a similar mindset as mine I started searching the community for "what to look for" when purchasing a project off of someone else. Vans themselves have a document on their website for some key points. I wanted to make a post that I will come back to update whenever I think of something else that I would have looked for when purchasing a used project.

1. Logs/paperwork. Did the previous builder log the work. This is not only nice to have for picking up a technical project, it says a lot about the builder. What level of detail, what level of organization was followed? Do they still have the build log? The inventory sheets? Call Vans with the builder number to make sure everything is okay.
2. Photos. In addition to the logs, does the builder have photos of his/her work? How detailed are they? 
3. Fuel tank dies. If the fuel tank is already dimpled, what dies did they use? Tank Dies? Standard dies. This is up to you to determine what you want, but it is a good question to ask.
4. Primer. Are the interior surfaces primered? Again, up to you if you care, but again, its a question to ask.
5. Mistakes. I was pretty straight forward when I purchased my project on asking what mistakes were made. I made it clear that I wasn't trying to get money taken off of the price, everyone makes mistakes, and I wanted to find out what the previous builder messed up and what their corrective action was.
6. One builder? It's a pretty good first question to ask. The first 3 or 4 projects I looked into had multiple builders. I was uncomfortable with having more than one builder on a project that only had the tail complete.
7. Exterior Rivets. Exterior inspection of rivets is pretty easy to do. Go look at the countless websites of what over driven rivets, under dimpled skins, crooked rivets look like.
8. Trailing edges. Are they straight? Sight down them and see if they wave. Also, how did they seal them if its a surface that has a wedge. Tape? Sealant?
9. Shop head side of rivets. If you have a bore camera all the better. Get into tight spaces at a minimum and look at what the shop heads look like. How many drilled out rivets can you find? The edges of things like the flap, look at the rivets and look inside the first bay. I know when I am riveting I do my best on everything, but when I get to something that is one bay away from open air I slow down to half speed just because someone may be looking in there at some point.
10. Tank sealant. Did they drive the rivets on the tank ribs when they were wet, or did they fay seal and let them cure with clecos. Again, this is up to you what you think is right/wrong, but it is a question worth asking. 

Fuel tank senders

This weekend I made good progress on finishing up my second flap as well as starting the final assemble on the first tank. The flap went well as I figured out the optimal bucking situation from the first flap. Also, the pro-sealing of the Trailing Edge went much smoother/quicker/cleaner than the first one.

 

With the flap clecoed to the table while the pro-seal dries I started the final assembly on the first tank. I squeezed the end rib wet, but started the other method where you let the sealant cure while the clecos are holding pressure and then shoot wet rivets after a couple of days of curing. I have gone back and forth on the pros/cons of shooting wet rivets vs letting the sealant cure and what finally did me in was while I was placing the first full rib I really did not want to be rushing to shoot rivets. My take is that I increase the risk of shooting bad rivets when I am in a hurry, so I am going to go with the Rick6a Method (at least for this tank). About the only thing that made sense to me against this approach was someones comment on the forum about how the clecos would not provide enough tension in this method and there would be too much pro-seal stuck between the rib and the skin. When you let it cure like that and come back to shoot rivets over cured sealant that the compression of cured sealant leaves a weaker mechanical connection between the rib and the skin due to the compressible material between the two. My intuition is that is a valid statement. My intuition also says that bad rivets due to rushing also make a poor mechanical connection. So cured sealant and wet rivets it is.

After 3 ribs I ran out of clecos. (I still have the flap in the jig, so I guess I am going to need to wait until I finish that up this week before I continue on the tank.) 

Since I was waiting for sealant to dry I thought it would be a good time to start taking care of the fuel senders. I am going to go with the standard float sensors for this build. I really don't trust fuel senders all that much anyways, so I might as well stick with the standard ones. I am not sure why I do this to myself, but I always seem to start with the right side of the plane even when the plans call out the left assemblies. In doing that, I guess I am more careful to read, re-read, and re-read the plans because I am always double checking left vs right. Also, it is always nice to put together the second assembly per the plans and have no incorrect part numbers.

In the case of fuel senders, this cannot be more true. I started with the right float arm bending. I remember reading someones post about the right float arm needing a couple of more bends than the left in order to clear one of the tank stiffeners.  I mocked up the float arm in some TIG wire so I did not screw up the real arm.

Now I am normally pretty good with building up pictures in my head, but I will say, when I started making bends for the right float arm I got really lost. What it came down to was the senders themselves. Per the diagram and the plans the LH side gets the 385B-F and the RH side gets the 385C-F.

That is fine and dandy, but for some reason I would have guessed that if there was a left and right sender that they would be symmetrical inverses of each other. If you look carefully at the sequence of photos below you will see that the operation of both senders are identical to each other. Also, I am a little ashamed of these photos considering I do own a real multi-meter (Fluke). Weird. I would have thought one would have been backwards from the other for some reason.

So what is the deal? I am a little saddened that it took me a good 20 minutes to figure it out. It wasn't until I tried screwing the 385C-F into the right rib before I figured out what was going on. If you look at the left photo, you will see that the hole pattern on the flanges are 180 degrees out from each other. That is beginning to make sense now.

I had to dig into the wonderful inter-tubes in order to verify what I was seeing. The Je-Mo build log had a great write-up on this. The following images are from his site:

Left tank (the sender orientation identical to the build plans)

Right tank. If you look carefully here, the float arm comes in from the forward side of the tank opposed to the left tank where the float arm comes in from the aft side of the tank.