Ch 13 Nose and Nose Gear

Yet more setting up of the rudders. I’ve really made a mistake in getting these custom built pedals. They were from a very experienced builder and professional engineer. That said, if I was doing it again…which I may have to, I’d go plans with the known mod of brakes up front using a few cables and levers. For now I will continue with these.

The required springs for the hidden rudder bellcrank were obtained from the Cozy Girrrls. I could have made my own but theirs are much nicer. I was concerned about connecting them with only the piano wire between me and rudder failure. I noticed the AN111-4’s fit perfectly into the wire loops at the top and bottoms as you see in the second spring in the pic. This will take the loads more evenly.

To set up the rudders so both pedals were at the same place I used a few scrapes of wood and clamps as you see above. Next was just a matter of swagging the cables to work with that length. Easy. I’m getting quicker at the cable thing.

This is my connection at the rudder pedals. I had also modified the penny washers into ovals so they would be less likely to snare on my foot.

I tried with no connectors although I’d made a few space adjusters.

When I was happy with the rudder position after a lot of fiddling I floxed in the upper pedal blocks. Yes I used hot glue and a tongue depressor to keep them in place while they cured.

You can see the pedal cable run here. I did set them up for the pedals forward originally, so the tube exit could now be pointing a bit more downward. However this is minor they still work very well through the tubes.

I spend a couple of hours setting up the side springs per plans but finally realised I needed to pull the pedals back not forwards in this configuration of mine. In the end a simple weak spring hooked from one pedal to the other worked pretty well.

I finally added 2 ply of BID to the forward pedal mounts today as you see above. Its the thing with the peel ply on it. I also realized that my pedals are not really adjustable. If I need to move them back any more, these blocks will need to be relocated. Yes not at great design after all. That said, I think I have it right for me. If not it is fixable with a couple of days work. Hey, not the end of the world. On the plus side …I have working rudders!   Oh yeah, I had to remake the spacers at the back yet again, pull the rudders on and off a few times and do a couple of extra days work. Who cares? Its done for now.

After much time, sitting in and looking at VH-JZE (my flying EZ) and sitting in XEZ (this build) I finally decided the solution was to move the rudder pedals as far back as I could. The problem was my feet were not going to be as comfortable as in the current plane and I have to think about route legs of up to 18 hours in this cramped cockpit. Leg and foot  position become very important.

I had thought about getting the pedals re-welded and other solutions. This idea of just moving them seems the best approach. As a bonus I am making a second set of fixing points for whoever follows me in this plane after I have finally flown 1000’s of hours in it and decided to move on to other adventures. Maybe they will be a lot taller?

Here is my current per plans position relative to the seat being 2″ forward of plans. Those two nut plates in the pic are the ones I’ve just made for putting in a rear position 2.3″ back (or forward depending on your viewpoint) from where the pedals are now fixed.

The ‘pivot’ blocks have the nutplate cover with 4 ply of BID. I promptly sanded off about 3.5 plies of BID. No need to add extra weight for no gain. Then it was just a matter of making an insert area.

I glued the new hardpoints in per plans. Here you can see how much they are moved back.

4 Plies of BID over the top and some peel ply.

Cutting out the new holes and setting up the inside holes took quite a while as its quite difficult to get into this area. I also found different length AN3 bolts were needed. After a long day it was done. If anything I have added an adjustment feature, right? Tomorrow I’ll continue with the rudder cable setup runs.

Securing the nose light plates is pretty straight forward.

I set up some click bonds and prepped them with a few dimples. I usually drill four holes all the way through at the cost of some 1/16″ drill bits. I ran out of bits but I’m not concerned as this is a very lightweight light fitting, not a primary control.

After applying the flox I secured the lights in place with hot glue so the clickbonds would be correct.. Once cured I removed the fittings and did a ply of BID over the clickbonds with peel ply. I first had to re-glue one of them as it was slightly proud. That’s another day while it cured. There are plenty of other jobs.

Once I was happy with the bracket fit I went to work and shaped them to a smaller footprint mainly for less weight.

This is a better size than I started with.

Here’s a light installed. I have since painted the rim silver to increase the lights reflection and I’ll fit the lens after the micro fill stage. Sometime in the future you might see the eye looking back at you, winking and blinking when I’m in the circuit area.

For some time I’ve been concerned about visibility in a busy airspace. My home airport is in fact the second busiest in Australia with around 250,000 movements a year. The tower often gives me traffic that I sometimes can’t find. Then when my Long-EZ is given as traffic they often add ‘its hard to see’. l know thats because I’m so small and fast.

I’ve noticed other planes are easy to see front on if their landing light is on. No luck from the side however. My idea is to have the wigwag operating on my landing light. That covers head on but I also want side recognition and the wing strobes are not bright enough in daylight. So I’m adding side fuselage lights that I can hook up to a wig-wag pattern.

As you will see they might also be the ‘eye’ in a nose paint job that will either be a shark or some other sort of fish.

I started with making some lens for the light that will sit flush with the fuselage. I had some 3.2mm perspex handy that I’d bought for the job a long time ago.

As the fuselage is curved where the lens go I had a crack at heat forming the perspex. To my amazement it would bend under its own weight and then return straight as it cooled down. I attached my metal ruler and some gaffer tape and heated it to the Tg of around 200F where the stuff really bends and couldn’t move as it cooled down. That gave me permanently curved perspex.

I then cut out two disks the same diameter of my recognition lights 2.25″ diameter. I’d already spent a while getting it drawn on the fuselage in the right place. The ‘place’ is out of the pilot line of sight and perfect if you are thinking of a fish or sharks eye position.

Here we are with the holes cut all the way through and a ‘step’ for the lenses. Are we looking like a fish?

You can see the step idea, a bit better in this shot here, for retaining the lens.

Lens in place for a test fit and reasonably flush with the surface seems possible.

I smoothed out the hole, added a flox corner on the inside and a ply of BID around the foam. Then peel ply.

Meanwhile I have to mount the light on the inside of the nose. I though of a bunch of ways of doing it. The lightest and simplest seems a bit of 6061T6 I had lying around.

Here are the basic brackets cut to side. I’ll trim for weight after they get fasteners. I went for aluminum as an additional heat sink. In testing yesterday I could see these lights get a little warm. While they have a rear heat sink, I think the bracket will help too.

Over the last three weeks I’ve been fiddling with the canard cover. Trying to get a better fit.

I’ve done 3 or 4 little adds to the bottom edges. It’s pretty close now and I think I can call it good until the final fill and fare. You can see in the pic its not too bad at the edges of the canard. I have an idea I might be able to store a few tools under the cover so it being removable is a plus.

Another tidy up job today was to get those really long pins cut to size. These are the ones I’m using instead of screws and hinges to hold the IP cover, the canard cover and the main hatch covers all in place.  You can see above I’ve cut recesses in the canopy frame which will lock in the pins.

The middle one is slightly shorter so that got a white cap the other two can be interchanged. I tried making hooks and bends for terminating the pins. I settled on a brass thimble which I have swagged on, and then some heat shrink to finish off. In the end, it couldn’t be simpler.

Here’s a shot of the nose hatch in place and the light lens. Not too bad. It will be perfect after a clean up. There is a tiny bit of movement in the hatches which I think will disappear when I put in some thin sealing rubber later.

All good, move on.

The nose light lens install continues.

With the front lens jammed in place my idea was to just add pieces to the rear with my special acrylic glue and this would hold the lens. I didn’t take the tape off which was protecting the lens so I couldn’t really see what I was doing.

As you see here the result was a little ugly. I kept going and floxed it in to place from the inside. It did hold the lens perfectly but …well if you have read this far you know that lens had to go. I tried to think of ways to hide the edges but it was not what I wanted to see every time I got the plane out.

This lens took many days to sort out. Not so long to cut out! I called BS and spent an hour or so cutting it free and then a while cleaning up the edges.

Here is version 2.0, with the knowledge gained on this I thought I could get it done in a day. It took two in the end but relatively easy the second time around. The new process was to construct the lens and then glue on the lip outside of the plane. My pieces are shown above.

All I had to do now was glue on the four lip pieces.

As you can see above this is MUCH better than my first try and a lot neater.

It took a bit more fitting and grinding to get the lens to sit in the hole flush with the outside fuselage edges. This second time there is a lot less stress on the lens and I’m much happier with the concept and fit. I used West epoxy as a flox paste to secure it. The West has a bit more flex or rather seems less brittle which is good where the perspex might expand and contract at a different rate to the surrounding glass.

It just needed a little pressure to hold it while the flox cured. A bit of bamboo from an indoor pot plant was handy.

I did add a little of the flox mix on the outside of the lip too which filled in some small gaps. It is a pretty good fit.

On the inside I also used West as thick flox around all the edges.

Once cured I couldn’t help myself and added 3 ply of BID to the bottom part mainly to make where the plane sits on its ‘lip’ even stronger. The other edges, sides and top were fine with just the flox.

Here’s my nose lens in place. After a fare and fill it will be almost perfect. Job done, even if it took a ver 2.0. I deem this good practice for the larger side windows that will happen soon.