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1/9 (Wednesday)

Packing for the trip. The weather will be all over the place. There were even reports of snow nearby. So I'm bringing clothes for warm and not-so-warm. My brother is done with his job in Florida but he's extending his stay a couple days so we can see each other.

 

1/14 (Monday)

I arrived in Sebastian at about 1:30am on Monday morning. A late flight on Sunday was all I could get. And after the drive from Orlando...

 

My accommodations for the next tree weeks are the Davis House Inn. It's kind of a B&B without the breakfast. Small but cozy.

 

Monday morning at 9am I was at the Velocity office. After introductions I went out to the shop and saw the plane (or what would become the plane) for the first time.

View from the front (Left side).

 

View from the front (Right side)

 

Looking in the back from the right door. The doors have been removed and you can see one inside on the floor. In the back you can see some of the main landing gear retract mechanism.

 

Looking inside to the front from the right door. Once again, you can see parts of the doors and the wheel from the front landing gear. All the windows are covered to protect them from being scratched during construction.

 

I was introduced to Rick. He would be one of my guides in getting started on this whole project. I started by doing an inventory of the parts. There are a couple hundred little bags with screws, nuts, bolts, and various other parts that I need to confirm are all there. This took over an hour. The first actual build task is to cutout and remove "the doghouse". The front wing (canard) is mounted in the nose of the aircraft. A part of the fuselage has to be cut out to allow placement of the canard. This piece that is removed is called (for some reason) the doghouse. First, the location of the canard has to be identified. This is accomplished by measuring from specific locations and marking where the canard will be.

 

Marking the canard location on the right side. The hole is drilled to help locate the position.

 

Once the canard position is marked, then lines are created using masking tape as a cutting guide.

 

The result after cutting the doghouse out.

 

In addition to the doghouse, I also had to cut out access ports in the keel and put in hardpoints for controls. The keel runs the length on the cabin and is between the left and right seats. The control stick is mounted in the keel.

 

It's hard to visualize it, but this is the keel (upside down). The round opening wasn't there this morning. One of the upcoming tasks is to build a cover. The opening will allow access to the control linkage.

 

In order to to mount controls to the keel, it is necessary to attach hardpoints to the fiberglass. This creates a strong mounting structure. In this case the hardpoints are created by mounting plywood to the keel and covering it with four layers of fiberglass cloth and epoxy.

 

Here are two of the hardpoints inside the keel. The white material will be removed once the epoxy cures.

 

Hours (today/total):  6/6

 

1/15 (Tuesday)

This morning, I started on engine cooling. In a conventional airplane (with the engine in front), there are openings at the front to allow ram air into the engine compartment to cool the engine. Since aircraft engines are air cooled, this is very important. Because the Velocity has a rear mounted engine, cooling is a challenge. The early Velocities used a pair of scoops on top of the fuselage just forward of the engine compartment. The scoops were similar to the hood scoops that you used to see on some high performance cars. The problem with scoops is that they aren't very efficient and since they protrude into the airstream, they cause drag.

 

So instead of air scoops, we will use NACA Ducts. NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) was the precursor of NASA. They discovered that if you create a recessed opening with the right shape, you can get more air with no drag.

 

So my first task was to cut out the two openings for the NACA ducts to the engine compartment and one for fresh air to the cabin.

 

 

From the back looking towards the front at the top of the fuselage. You can see where the two large ducts will be. There's also a smaller fresh air duct in the middle. The tan colored area is the rear of the fuselage (also know as the firewall) where the engine will be mounted. I've also marked the openings in the firewall for the ducts.

 

Here, I've cut out the engine cooling ducts on top of the fuselage. At this point, I haven't done the fresh air duct or the firewall openings.

 

After cutting the small NACA duct and the firewall openings, I prepared the surfaces mounted all three ducts with structural epoxy.

 

One of the things I've got be better at is taking pictures. When I get rolling on a task, I forget to pull the camera out and take pictures. This is why there are no pictures of the installed ducts and flight controls in the keel.

 

Hours (today/total):  6/12

 

1/16 (Wednesday)

 

This morning I installed the two engine cooling NACA ducts and the fresh air duct.

 

The installed ducts held in place with structural epoxy.

 

Inside view of the three ducts.

 

Next I mounted the four hinges to the two elevators. These are mounted at the rear of the canard. When the control stick is pulled back, the elevators are deflected down which increases lift at the canard (airplane goes up).

 

Two holes are drilled in the hinge. Then structural epoxy is applied to the hinge and it's riveted to the elevator. Finally, another hole is drilled between the two rivets and a screw and nut are used to further hold it in place.

 

This is one of the hinge brackets riveted, glued and screwed in place.

 

Here are both elevators with the four hinge brackets on each elevator.

 

The last task for the day was to create a rectangular opening just forward of the firewall on each side of the fuselage for the main spar. The spar is the primary mounting point for the main wings.

 

Here are the lines that mark the opening on the left side.

 

And then, after cutting the opening.

 

Hours (today/total):  6/18

 

1/17 (Thursday)

 

This morning I glassed in the firewall side of the NACA ducts.

 

This is a view from the firewall of the pilot side NACA ducts with fiberglass/epoxy layups.

 

I also mounted the landing gear retract hydraulic cylinders. These cylinders will raise and lower the landing gear.

 

This is the nose gear retract cylinder. I also started installing some of the hydraulic lines.

 

This is the main gear retract cylinder with some hydraulic lines.

 

I began installation of the nose gear doors. First the doors are fitted to the opening and then temporarily held in place with globs of bondo (auto body filler).

 

Nose gear doors (still a single assembly) held in place.

 

Earlier in the week, I made the nose gear door hinges (four). Now it was time to mount the hinges on the doors. To insure the geometry, a steel rod is run between the two hinges for door. The hinges are then glued in place with epoxy.

 

Inside view of the nose gear door with hinges in place.

 

Front right hinge glued in place. A piece of 3/8 inch blue foam is used to make sure the pivot point is the correct distance from the fuselage.

 

Hours (today/total):  6/24

 

1/18 (Friday)

 

This morning I made the nose gear door hinge brackets (eight, two for each hinge. They are mounted to the hinges with bolts. Then, 5-minute epoxy will attach them to the fuselage.

 

Nose gear doors with hinge brackets glued in place.

 

Rear hinges and brackets. Each bracket is custom shaped for it's particular position and orientation. To keep track of them, I numbered them (1 - 8) and put a dot on the side facing the front.

 

Another task was attaching the elevators to the canard. Earlier, I mounted the hinge brackets to the elevator. Now it's time to mount the hinges to the canard.

 

Here's the canard (it's upside down so you're looking at the bottom) with the two elevators in position. The elevators are held in the approximate position with aluminum I-beams, weights and clamps while we tweak the alignment.

 

Once the nose gear door hinge brackets were glued in place, I cut the gear doors down the middle and removed them. I finished the day by reinforcing the hinges to the doors with two layers of BID (BI-Directional fiberglass cloth).

 

Hours (today/total):  7/31

 

1/19 (Saturday)

 

Quiet day. The only other people working was a builder that flew down from Canada who was preparing his plane for painting. I began the day by cleaning up the nose gear door hinge layups from last night. Just some light sanding to clean them up.

 

Next, I started reinforcing the nose gear door hinge brackets. Each tab get two layers of BID on each side. It's close quarters so I decided to the outside of each pair of brackets today and the inside tomorrow. While I was working on the prep, a couple of guys were in for a tour and a demo flight. This was what me and Ann did in June. I figured that I would take a picture or two so they could have a picture.

 

Future Velocity builder returning from a successful demonstration flight?

 

Nose gear door hinge brackets with layups. The white fabric looking stuff isn't fiberglass cloth. It's a dacron material that's applied on top of the fiberglass which is peeled off once the epoxy dries. It leaves a smooth finish once it's removed.

 

Close up of the rear hinge brackets.

 

Next, I needed to do a layup of two layers of BID at the rear cabin bulkhead.

 

Inside of the cabin looking aft. At the bottom on either side are two chases (or channels) that will be used to run electrical cables to the engine compartment. The gray that goes halfway around the bottom is structural epoxy that holds the rear cabin bulkhead in place.

 

Close up at the center bottom of the bulkhead.

 

The first task is to create a fillet with a "micro-slurry" (epoxy with microscopic bubbles called "micro-balloons" that thicken the epoxy). This rounds over the intersection where the bulkhead meets the fuselage. Then the two layers of BID are applied.

 

View of bulkhead after the micro-slurry fillet and BID layup. You'll notice that instead of gray, the joint at the bulkhead is now yellowish. That's the micro-slurry.

 

Center bottom of bulkhead after micro-slurry and BID layup.

 

Final task for the day is to trim the front access cover to fit in the opening.

 

Hours (today/total):  6/37

 

1/20 (Sunday)

 

Quiet and short day. First I removed the peelply from the outside of the hinge brackets. They came out okay. I thing think they could be better but it's just a "looks" thing.

 

Rear hinge brackets.

 

Another view.

 

I re-drilled the holes before putting in the inside layups. The inside layups were much easier since there were only four instead of eight.

 

Since the hydraulics cylinders for the main and nose gear are inside the keel, if there is a hydraulic leak, the fluid could penetrate the core of the fuselage beneath the floor. The fix is to coat the area with epoxy. The first step is to mark the area where the keel would be. Then, sand the area. Then mask the area to receive the epoxy. Finally, paint the epoxy on.

 

The floor with epoxy under the keel area (forward). The dark area is wet epoxy. You can see the centerline mark and (barely) see the lines that show the outside of the keel. The rectangular mark in the center (with the four holes) is where the nose gear retract hydraulic cylinder is mounted. Oh yeah, I had to remove the gear retract hydraulics to do this. I have a feeling that this is going to be a recurring theme... Assemble something only to have to disassemble it for a later task.

 

Rear view.

 

I finished the day assembling the rudder/toe brake pedal assembly. I wasn't able to completely assemble them as I'm opting for a different style pedal.

 

The partially assembled... assembly?  Left and right brake cylinders for pilot and co-pilot.

 

Pilot side brake cylinders.

 

A note on the "hours". These are hours actually working. Not walking around looking for tools, materials, finding someone to answer a question or trying to find a part in a bunch of boxes. My goal is to see how many hours of actual "work" is required to build this plane.

 

Hours (today/total):  5/42

 

1/21 (Monday)

 

This morning, when I was trimming the inside nose gear door brackets layups, one of them came loose! I checked the other three and I was able to work them loose also. The only thing I can think of is there was some contaminant on the parts. I cleaned the pieces and did the layup again. Next I installed the front section of the keel. This is glued in place using structural adhesive.

 

Here's the keel from where the pilots seat would be. You can see the bottom of the keel starting at the bottom right of the picture going towards the center. Then it meets the canard bulkhead and follows it up. That corner is about where my feet will be. You can see the gray structural adhesive oozing out. The copper colored cylindrical objects spaced about six inches apart are cleco's (temporary fasteners).

 

Inside view of the keel where it meets the canard bulkhead. The slot cut into the bulkhead is where the nose landing gear will swing up to the retracted position. Down at the bottom on each side of the keel are small pre-drilled holes. The nose landing gear will pivot at this point.

 

Then the canard bulkhead had to be reinforced. This time, instead of BID, I had to use Triax (with Triaxial fabric, the threads run in three directions instead of two). A really big job today was mounting the elevator hinges to the canard. Since this will affect the position and motion of the elevator, great care is taken to ensure that the location of the hinges are exactly right.

 

Since the hinges that attach the elevator to the canard are on the bottom, it's easier to work on it upside down. So here's the bottom of the canard with the attached elevator.

 

Finally, the main gear retract pulley mounting block is location is reinforced. There will be pulleys here that connect the main landing gear retraction hydraulic cylinder to the landing gear with cables. There's a fair amount of stress in this area so it gets beefed up with about three layer of BID.

 

Main gear pulley mounting area

 

Hours (today/total):  6/48

 

1/22 (Tuesday)

 

One task day today. This morning the structural adhesive securing the keel was cured. Now the front portion of the keel (where it meets the front bulkhead) has to be reinforced. In one place, there are 8 layers of triax! Once I had prepped the area with sanding and putting in the fillets, it took almost 5 hours to do the layups.

 

 

Same area as the first picture on Monday but now with 4 layers of triax.


Same area as the second picture from Monday (inside of keel) but now with three layers of triax at the bottom and 8 layers at the top!

 

 

Hours (today/total):  8/56

 

1/23 (Wednesday)

 

I was going to start the day mounting the nose landing gear.  But it requires drilling a hole through the keel where I did the layups yesterday. But the epoxy had not fully cured yet. So I worked on the main landing gear retraction hardware. This involved putting the pulleys in place, checking the fit, remove, file some of the bulkhead away to allow movement, put the pulleys back in place and repeat... multiple times. This took most of the day. Next, I fitted the nose gear doors and made sure they had free movement. This is the first task I've performed to completion on a articulating part. Very satisfying. I finished the day helping Scott Swing drill eight foot long holes through the canard. This was supposed to be done when the canard was fabricated, but it was overlooked. To drill the holes, a ten foot long, half-inch pipe was used. We cut notches in one end and used a drill to spin the pipe from each end of the canard. Then a one inch hole was created in the middle of the canard where the two holes meet. These holes will be for the wire of the recognition lights that will be on the ends of the canard.

 

Hours (today/total):  6/62

 

1/24 (Thursday)

 

This morning I started by mounting the nose landing gear. The first step is to re-drill the 1/4" holes to one inch. Drilling through 12 layers of triax, 4 layers of BID and 1/4" of plywood is a tedious process... twice.

 

Pilot side of front of keel with the pivot hole for the nose gear.

 

After the holes were opened, I had to check and adjust the motion of the landing gear. No adjustment needed... pleasant surprise. I'm told they usually need to be adjusted to align the nose gear. Then I had to drill four holes four each mounting plate and using structural adhesive, glue them in place.

 

Pilot side of front of keel with the nose gear hardware installed.

 

Almost ready for a third wheel!

 

 

I finished the day by completing the retract pulleys and starting the engine mount reinforcing on the firewall.

Main gear retract pulleys.

 

Hours (today/total):  6/68

 

1/25 (Friday)

 

Short day today. I'm leaving Sebastian at around noon to go home for the weekend. Since the nose gear pivot brackets have cured, I started setting up the nose gear retraction mechanism. Once I had it set up, I had to insure the rear pivot point was correctly located. It was. This is the second mounting location that hasn't required any adjustment. I'm told that they almost always need to be moved a little. This makes me a bit apprehensive. When thing go together too well, I usually think it means that I'm overlooking something. Since the rear retract pivot point seems correctly located, I used epoxy to hold the bushings and mounting plate is place. By then, it was time to head back to the room, shower and drive to Orlando to catch my flight... Which when I got to the airport was delayed about 90 minutes.

 

Hours (today/total):  3/71

 

 

1/28 (Monday)

 

Returned from a weekend at home Sunday evening. Got started bright and early Monday morning. When I arrived at the shop, Fred had finished painting his plane and had begun putting everything back together.

 

Frank removing the masking tape from his plane.

 

The first task was to finish the nose gear install and get the front of the plane off the sawhorse. What seemed to be relatively simple task ended up taking all day. I had to install two brackets. The first one was an alignment bracket that keeps the nose gear centered (left to right) when extended. The difficultly was accessing the the bracket. There's just not that much room inside the keel. Next, I had to reinforce the inside of the keel where it meets the floor. Then, I had to install the upstop bracket. This limits how far the nose gear can extend. Once all of that was finished, I was finally able to install the nose wheel and put the airplane on all three wheels for the first time.

 

The first milestone!

 

Hours (today/total):  8/79

 

1/29 (Tuesday)

 

Today I turned the plane around to make it easier to install the spar. Normally, the spar is installed before the top fuselage is mated to the bottom. But in a fastbuild, the factory joins the two fuselage parts. This makes installing the spar... challenging. First the spar is slid through the fuselage to check the position. Since the wing is mounted to the spar, the position of the spar is CRITICAL. First it is checked for center. It must extend out the fuselage equally on both sides (you wouldn't want one wing longer than the other, right?). This is pretty easy; just measure each end to the center of the firewall. A nudge, measure, a nudge, measure, etc. Then it is checked for level left-to-right. In this case a small shim was needed on the right side. Then the spar is checked for level front-to-rear. The spar was perfectly level in this direction. Finally, the spar is measured for perpendicular to the centerline. This is done by measuring from the nose of the plane to the left end of the spar and comparing it to the right. Both dimensions were identical! This is starting to make me real nervous. This have been about the forth thing that usually requires a bit of adjusting to make it true.

 

Then the spar is marked for position and removed. Structural adhesive (did I mention that I'm really starting to hate that stuff?) is thickened and liberally applied. Then we slid the spar back in trying to not smear it all over the place. Once it was back in place we had to recheck all the measurements. It only required a couple of tweaks to get it back in the correct position.

 

Almost ready for the main wings.

 

About 100 yards from the hangar is Skydive Sebastian that uses a DeHavilland DHC-6 Twin Otter as a jump plane. Every day we hear the plane take off and about 15 minutes later it lands. So yesterday I stopped by and asked if I could ride along in the right seat. Once the spar was in, I grabbed a spare headset and rode one of the bikes down to the skydiving center. There were about 12 lunatics... er, I mean skydivers in the back. We climbed up to 13,500 feet and then:

 

After the last jumper was out the pilot made a beeline for the ground.

 

Here's a view looking straight out the front window. You figure it out.

 

I finished the day starting the canard placement.

 

Hours (today/total):  6/85

 

1/30 (Wednesday)

 

This morning when I woke up, I logged in and checked the weather... Back home. It was -11 (that's farhrenheit without the windchill) When I walked out the door, I was greeted with this:

 

And a forecast high of 75.

 

Today was a one-task day. That means I accomplished only one task. Actually, it was half of a single task. Yesterday I installed the main spar. The main spar is an incredibly over-engineered C-beam that protrudes out each side of the fuselage about 5 feet. The main wings will bolt to this spar so it's very important that it be securely attached to the fuselage. The initial installation is done with structural adhesive. But that's only a start.

 

This looking towards the back of the fuselage from the inside. The two horizontal lines going left to right with yellowish between is the spar. You can see the gray structural adhesive at the top and bottom where it exits the fuselage. What I have to do is make it become a part of the plane.

 

The first step is to make a foam bridge from the top of the spar to the top of the main gear bulkhead.

 

Here's the left side with a piece of divinycell foam bridging the space between the top of the spar and the top of the gear bulkhead.

 

Here's the right side after I've coated the foam with a slurry of epoxy and microballoons. I've also created fillet in the corners to make an easier radius for the layups.

 

The same location with all the layups in place. At the location above the spar, there are 10 layers of triax. Some of the layups run down the foam bridge and go almost to the floor. Others go towards the windows. In all, there are 12 separate pieces of triax. And that's just on one side. The light colored patches are peel-ply. Thin dacron that's placed over the layups and makes the surface of the fiberglass smooth. Very important at the edges since without it a lot of sanding is required. This is all I accomplished today... Without stopping for lunch.

 

I did get all the pieces cut for the other side so tomorrow should be a little faster.

 

Hours (today/total):  8/93

 

1/31 (Thursday)

 

My last full day in Sebastian. I started early this morning to do the left side spar reinforcing layups. No pictures since it's the same thing I did yesterday. But, I was done by lunch. Then I started the pre-departure inventory. Not all of the parts were brought over from the production facility so once I finished the inventory I rode over to the factory and say down with Ken to go over the missing parts. Most of the missing items were already boxed up and ready to ship. A couple items were on backorder. The few remaining missing parts (it's possible that I used them and forgot to mark them off) he just grabbed them out of inventory. No questions asked.

 

I also found out that the wings would not be ready for transport in two weeks. My plan was to have Travis arrive on 2/18 with the airplane and stay for a couple days to help get started with the strakes. After the two weeks in the middle of February, I'm not going to have much time to dedicate to the build until the 10th of March. Frustrating. But since it's a two year project, three weeks isn't that much of a setback... I guess.

 

Hours (today/total):  5/98

 

February