July, '06--
...We
had a nice turnout for our Saturday workshop. Our main focus at the moment is
getting our undercarriage finished. With the fuselage upside down and level,
Dave Winsett set to work building a 2 X 4 frame to accurately establish the
location of the axle (see photo below). With our gear leg fittings welded and
attached to the fuselage and the axle in place in the jig, we can get an
accurate measurement of the length the legs will have to be. Then it's a simple
matter of cutting and fitting (again and again) until we have a pair of usable
legs.
Original builder, Ken Hannan, showed up to take a look at our progress. Like
the rest of us, he can see that it won't be long before we will have the
fuselage up on the gear and able to roll it around.
Wendy Hinman
dropped by with a set of plans for a project that he's considering. He's been
studying the plans and thinks it would be more accurate to call them
"suggestions on how to build this airplane." Apparently, there's a lot left to
the imagination of the builder.
Later, Charlie
Rowlett arrived with some tools to mount our tires for us. He explained that he
was a little late getting to the workshop because he'd been out the night before
on a dirt bike outing with some friends. They rode their off-road motorcycles
at night up
Mt.
San Jacinto
to Idyllwild and back - entirely in the dirt! They got home at 3 o'clock in the morning. Art commented that it made sense to do a ride
like that at night. "At night you can't see where your going, so you don't get
scared!"
After some
careful examination of our rims and spokes, he recommended deburring a few of
the spokes before mounting the tires and installing the tubes. He had some nice
things to say about the quality of the wheels in general. The spokes, he said,
were plenty heavy enough for aircraft use and the extra wide hubs would take the
worry out of any potential side loads. He discussed the value inherent in the
simple straight axle and bushing style of landing gear. He opined that the
reputation for squirrelly ground handling characteristics of some taildraggers
with independent axles might be traced to toe-in alignment being thrown out of
adjustment by hard landings. Something to think about. See photo below of
Charlie mounting one of our tires. Progress continues.
Come see the
project as it takes shape. Visitors are always welcome. If you want to join in
the fun as a workshop participant, be there on any Saturday morning at
8 AM. You can find us at the south end of
the field in Bldg. 95, Hangar 15. See you then.
Steve Williamson,
Pres.
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2X4
landing gear jig |
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Dave
Winsett explains his plan of action to Ken Hannan |
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Checking the wheel base measurement |
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Charlie Rowlett mounts a tire |
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March, '06--
...At year's end the wood work on the tail surfaces was done as
were the hinges and attachment hardware. All that remained was the rigging
and mounting of a tailwheel. Of course, Bernie's original plans showed either
a leaf spring tail skid or a hinged skid with a coil spring at the tailpost.
We all agreed that a steerable tailwheel was a definite advantage on today's
hard surface runways. Some builders have chosen to mount a wheel to Bernie's
hinged coil spring fitting. We decided that it would be much easier to simply
go with a wheel at the end of a leaf spring, even if it meant a deviation from
Bernie's plans. Since Aircraft Spruce offered a bolt-on steerable tailwheel,
we decided that represented a good excuse to fly to AJO and pick one up.
Bernie's leaf spring attachment design may have been
adequate for a skid on grass, but we took the advise of Michael Cuy in his
construction video and beefed up the area where the spruce longerons come
together at the tailpost to create a solid attachment surface for the spring
(See photo below).
All that remained to finish the tail was the guy wires. We
needed wire, thimbles, sleeves, shackles, and clevis pins. Another excuse to
fly to AJO!!! We swaged our first guy wire that afternoon. I spent the next
day swaging the other seven wires and rigging the tail. Except for varnishing
and covering, the tail is finished (see photos below).
Now I can turn my attention to the control system. Guess
I'll need more material. Oh well, we'll just have to make another trip to AJO!!
I'll have another update for you when we get back. See ya!!
Steve
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A spruce wedge between the longerons
with plywood on the top and bottom
make a solid attachment point for the
leaf spring.
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Close up of guy wire fitting.
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Upper fitting was slightly modified
to allow us to use shackles
for wire attachment.
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Here's a view of Art's mock up
of our gear legs in pine.
(Details in the next update)
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October-- from Steve W.
We had a nice turnout
for our Saturday morning workshop. Project Director Art Froehlich spent the
morning calculating compound angles for the wooden gear legs. He used the
compound miter saw to cut some one inch pieces of pine to check the angles for
fit so that we don't waste any of our valuable spruce. See photo below.
Dave McPhee used a wood rasp to form the leading edge piece for our wing
center section. See photo below. This was very time consuming and it made us
wonder about better ways we might utilize to form the wing leading edges. The
center section is only two and a half feet wide. But the wings are 28 feet
long plus a 5 foot wing tip. Suggestions?
After mounting the vertical and horizontal stabilizers (photo below), I
began chiseling the insets in the control surfaces for the hinge pieces (see
photo). I was able to complete the insets for the rudder and mount it. After
making some minor alignment adjustments, the rudder swung back and forth
effortlessly. The insets were cut in the elevators, but the insets in the
horizontal will have to wait until next week.
We had visits from Dave Winsett, who has secured a donated Corvair engine
(see photo), and Webmaster Dave Smith, who took lots of photos for our
website.
All in all a very productive morning. Stop in and see the progress.
Visitors are always welcome. And of course anyone who wants to learn or hone
their skills at aircraft construction techniques can join us on any Saturday
morning from 8 AM to noon in Bldg. 95, Hangar 15. See you next week.
Steve
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Art checking gear leg angles.
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Dave forming leading edge.
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Chiseling hinge insets.
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Detail of 1/16th in. inset cut into elevator.
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Tail is coming together.
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Hinge close up.
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Center section.
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Donated Corvair engine.
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October--
To give you an
update on our progress, our wing ribs have all been completed and they turned
out just beautifully. (Come by and take a look!!) We are postponing the
remaining wing construction for reasons of storage. We can always use a few
spare ribs. So if you want to learn something about rib construction, come on
out and try your hand at one of aviation's most basic art forms. We have a
jig and some remaining material. Come on out and give it a try.
Charlie Rowlett took our tail fittings home to his workshop in Fallbrook
to give them a thorough sandblasting and a coat of zinc chromate. Once we are
satisfied with the fit and function of each and every fitting, we will give
them a final coat of two-part epoxy enamel (probably in black, though the
color is yet to be decided). Plans call for the tail fittings to be recessed
and riveted in place using 3/16" rivets. Notwithstanding the design wisdom of
Bernie Pietenpol, literally everyone seems to cringe at the prospect of
putting rivets into wood. And then there is the inability to inspect or
tighten the fittings once the surface is covered with fabric. There seems to
be a unanimous consensus that we would be better off covering the tail
surfaces FIRST, and attaching the fittings over the fabric using AN3 bolts
instead of rivets. Feedback, anyone?
Our wing center section is beginning to take shape thanks to some focused
effort by Dave McPhee. We have a contact (right on the field) for a welded
aluminum fuel tank custom built to fit into our wing center section. I'll
keep you posted.
Dave Winsett has been beating the bushes (not the Bush's, just the bushes)
to find a Corvair engine core. And his persistence has paid off. He received
a call from a fellow in Lake Elsinore willing to donate a Corvair engine to
the project. It is an early model engine, but the price was right. We should
be able to use some of the parts and use others as bargaining chips with
Corvair part suppliers. It's missing some of the bolt on parts, but we were
able to turn the crank so internal rust is probably minimal. Anyway, it's a
start. Thanks, Dave, for all of your efforts.
So there you have it. That is the latest. We have a goal to have the
tail mounted, the fuselage up on the gear with the center section attached by
the end of the year. It is a reasonable goal and quite attainable.
September-- from our
President
Dear Members,
We continue to make progress on our chapter project at our Saturday
morning workshops thanks to the guidance of Art Froehlich and the commitment
and dedication of a few key members. The welding has been completed on the
tail fittings including the control horns and control surface hinges. This
gave us an opportunity to clamp the tail surfaces in place and check the fit
and alignment (see photo below). Everything looks good. A little woodwork
remains to be done on the horizontal, but the fittings are finished and ready
for priming. Very little work remains before we will be able to attach the
vertical and horizontal stab as well as the control surfaces. The hinges were
a challenge because of the shear number of tiny pieces that had to be cut,
ground, drilled, countersunk, bent, and welded into the final pieces you see
pictured below.
In the meantime, Art Froehlich has been working hard on the landing gear
set up. In an effort to create a nostalgic look to the Piet, we decided that
it would be nice to stick with wooden gear legs. The only drawings we had for
the wood gear were found in the 1932 Flying and Gliding Manual. The problem
was that the drawings were in small, almost unreadable print. Art devoted a
tremendous amount of free time at home trying to create some usable drawings
from measurements taken from the existing fuselage. The metal fittings used
to attach the legs to the fuselage have been our greatest challenge. These
are critical load bearing parts that perform multiple functions. There are
four fittings, each with compound bends in different directions. Every bend
changed the dimensions of the piece sending us back to the drawing board.
Eventually, we had a workable fitting (see photo below). The others should be
easy to duplicate now. This is one hurdle I know that Art is happy to have
behind us.
Dave McPhee has chosen to focus his attention on our wing center section.
He has given new member, Ken Smith, the task of fabricating some of the metal
fittings in his machine shop, while he works on the butt ribs. The butt ribs
are made of 1/2" spruce which is available in a maximum of 4" width without
getting into custom cut pieces. Dave decided it would be more economical to
laminate two pieces together to give him the height he needed for the rib
profile. He has spent the last couple of Saturday mornings shaping and
sanding the three sections of each rib along with cutting out the lightening
holes. He has ordered spar material for the center section and will be
starting work on those this weekend.
Dave Winsett continues to gather information on sources for a rebuildable
Corvair engine as well as rebuild parts and kits. He has purchased and
donated a William Wynn conversion manual for our project. There will be a
Corvair conversion seminar at Chapter One's open house on September 24 at
Flabob Airport. And a west coast "Corvair College" conducted by William Wynn
himself is tentatively planned for early next year at Flabob. We will need to
find a source of funds for our engine if we are going to be in any position to
take advantage of these opportunities.
Come on out and join us on Saturday mornings from 8AM to noon in Hangar
15, Bldg. 95 at the south end of the field at French Valley. See you then.
Steve Williamson, Pres.
EAA Chapter 1279
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Dozens of tiny pieces had to be fabricated to make up the 9 hinges
required.
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One finished hinge ready for priming.
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Finished empennage fittings ready for zinc chromate.
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Jig for welding hinge pieces.
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Checking the fit.
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Sanding and shaping center section butt rib.
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Checking dimensions on a gear leg fitting.
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Success!! Upper part attaches to fuselage. Lower part to leg. The
nut is where wing lift strut attaches. "X" guy wire attaches to the
other end.
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July--
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elevator control horn |
hinge |
May--
finished ribs
April '05-- delivery
Our Pietenpol was begun in April,
when it was acquired from member Ron Hull who was going to be starting on his
RV-7A soon. It had already had some quality work
in the fuselage and ribs. Since then, workshops have been
held every Saturday, 8-12p in Steve W.'s hangar, where anyone interested in
helping or watching a nice wood and fabric airplane grow have come by.
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