Ch 13 Nose and Nose Gear

The rudder pedals needs adjustment. They are too close and my knees hit the top of the Instrument panel bulkhead when I move to place them on the pedals. Part of this is probably because I moved the front seat two inches forward in the build for CofG reasons and the fact that I’m not a tall guy. Probably a mistake given this issue. Then again I do sit quite high up with my modified canopy so its likely the problem would be there anyway.

Here’s the position I need to modify. I thought I’d just have to extend the cables via spacers but this turned not to work and I needed a different solution.

I made up an ice-cream stick mock up which seemed to be about right.

Then I carefully tested it in place.

Just to be 100% sure, I had a couple of pieces welded on so I could test different lengths using a bit of foot force in the cockpit. I might mention it is a whole world of hurt installing and reinstalling the pedals. At one point I had to remove the whole nose gear leg and actuator to get to the embedded nuts as one was suspect.

No it was me that was suspect, I just needed a longer bolt to properly engage. <sigh>

I had them beautifully welded by a buddy in the next hangar who just happened to have a stainless steel welding business in town. About time I had some luck. I spent a few hours installing them with my head upside down at times. It was a lot easier before the panel went in.

Of course after testing I still didn’t have it right, despite being really careful. This is the final result, version 2. It works, but it is not ideal. Maybe there is a way of angling the pedal rods or something.

They are useable and I’m going with them for now, and probably for a long time. I can taxi, brake and sideslip in to land OK. I’m just surprised that I couldn’t get it spot on. I think this is still down to the panel cut-out heights and the seat position.

One of the most highly respected canard experts and a professional maintainer, Marc Zeitlin, has been on about nose lift failures for some time as he has seen quite a number. It seems the bolts no matter how they are fixed, and I used loctite and safety wire, undo over time and failure here can mean a lot of nose damage. I have such a nice nose paint job this is unacceptable!  Marc has released a retrofit fix kit for a reasonable price. I had to do it as a preventative measure.

Here are the parts and instructions.

Of course, getting the nose lift out on my install is no trivial matter.

I eventually got the cover off. The secret is to unplug all the electrics first that go into the box on the side of the cover. Then there is no need to remove the box from the cover after all. That’s an hour or so I will never get back.

Some people don’t have a cover. If not its just the two side bolts after you remove the bolt on the gear leg.

It is out at last.

This is something I’ve been meaning to do for a couple of years! Just some blue loctite on the nuts and little bolts that hold the limit switches in place. If these come loose the gear just might go through the floor when it retracts or maybe the motor will keep running when it extends fully and burn out? Whatever the case, despite the lock nuts I have added the extra 243 makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

The clamp is partly installed here. The shear fitting allows the nut to rotate with the gear leg and eliminate the unscrewing problem. Genius.

Now its all, back together as if nothing had happened, …except another day is over.

Plumbing the pitot and Static System.

This is what we have in the plans, a very practical simple setup.

This is my mud map of a far more complex system, and what I need. It represents the whole of my build in a way. If I’d kept to the plans I would have finished years ago. That said, this plane has a different mission to the fun, lightweight, day VFR aircraft that Burt designed. A hard IFR, round the world platform with a range of around 2500nm and economy cruise of at least 3 nautical miles a minute is a different animal.

There are so many fittings that if I bought what I thought I needed then I would have been paying for extra postage and weeks of fiddling around. Working it out from a catalog was nearly impossible. I spent quite a bit extra and got an assortment that will last me the rest of my life and probably help out on some other peoples planes.

The next step was to see how I could get from my pitot and static fittings to the instruments.

The heated pitot had a 0.25″ OD metal tube for connection.  I flared it and added an AN fitting to mate with the hard plastic and second AN firewall joiner. This worked out pretty well in the end. Most of the plastics are 1/8″ NPT which took some finding out. These sizes are a black art as many are ‘almost’ the same, but not quite.

The static fittings and alternate static source switch also needed to come to the party.

Where the connectors go on the left is where tubing now needs to live.

Here’s the first GSU25 connections. There were a few similar tries before I could make things fit. The center AoA has to connect to the static port even though angle of attack its not used.

The Pitot became quite neat in the end. I used red heat shrink to indicate pitot lines. The static lines are just clear tube. At the second join is a drain tube to the bottom of the nose. The side tube is a static source for an airspeed switch for the nose gear emergency extend.

The static ports on both sides needed careful placement around the rudder cables. I also need access as these might require some adjustment during test flying.

The many joins are all necessary and somehow these are almost tidy in the corner. Almost.

Lines also had to come from the left side of the plane where the GSU25 is. It took a few goes to find a clear path.

There are black flexible tubes to the Garmin G5 in the form of service loops so the unit can be removed, battery changed or whatever, without undoing a lot of hard lines.

I’ll need to get this whole system professionally checked for leaks annually. For now things seem to work.

Time to finally get the nose brake line sorted out.

After a lot of thought I went for a clickbond to hold the 1/8″ line with a hose clamp.

You can see the hose clamp in place at the right of the pic. Next up was to secure the brake line so I wouldn’t kick it every time I got in the plane. I went for flox, a two ply BID tape and as you can see sticks to hold it in place while it cured.

After a clean up I painted the newly secured brake line to match the interior. Almost no one will see this but I feel good about it.

The Swagelok lines are easy to install but I was very careful anyway. Here you can see I have a connected brake system up front.

This is something I should have done years ago. It has since come to my attention that some of the canard gurus say that lots of cold gets in from the nose wheel box which is right between my legs. Everywhere else in the cockpit, except the windows and canopy has a good half inch or more insulating foam in the structure. The nose box has a couple of plies of glass and thats it!

Given I have just done the heat shields in the wing roots I had plenty of this hi-tech ceramic insulation left over. The distributor said it was also good for cold insulation, which makes sense.

A long time was spent on how to do this and what material. This Zircoflex II is only .5mm thick with a sticky 3M backing. I did sand off the paint I had previously put on. Nothing is final!

It came out quite neatly.

I wanted thin material because every time I get in the plane there would be the potential of snagging a corner with my feet. I mixed a little micro and  transitioned the edges. Of course peel ply as pictured helps further.

Peel ply off and a light sand and I was ready for the primer undercoat. Being silver foil it took a number of coats with a brush to get a solid covering.

Next was a mammoth job of masking so I could spray the top coats. I didn’t want any textured paint on my nice new white exterior!

It looks gold in the pic but it isn’t. We have texture. A day later, clear semigloss top coat.

After it dried for a couple more days I just used scotchbrite for a matching surface with the rest of the interior. Job done, move on.

This plane will have two static vents as well as an alternative cockpit static. The plans method static port is not adjustable in any way and same say it is prone to leaking. I have aluminium plug vents from ACS with a 1/8″ NPT thread. An issue is that you drill a hole in the side for them and they sit slightly proud of the fuselage. I’ve read online that for our birds a flush mount MIGHT be needed.

Using the plans finding where to put the ports is straight forward. My issue is if I install these ports before the paint job, if they in fact do need to be flush it will be a mess at the edges. If its slightly proud then I’d be OK. How to do it for both scenarios? Fellow builder and pilot, Darren had a good idea.

This idea needs a ring inserted into the plane. A ring with a 19mm ID to be precise.

This picture should make it clear. With the ring installed I can add the static port later and the paint will still be good to the edges of the ring.  I can hot glue the port in place for flight testing and move it very slightly in or out if needed.

Here’s the ring installed. I’ll add the port post paint job.