Ch 13 Nose and Nose Gear

Having hard shelled the inside of the nose top this time I then got all the micro dulled off with sandpaper. I thought for a while about how to do the layup. All the edges now with extra plys or just get a good one Ply BID base?

I went with just the one ply for now and it worked out well. The hard shelling meant I had a good finish over the foam this time so thats the method of choice when using pour foam here on in.

Rather than cut out pieces to save a little glass I went for the ‘one large’ and later cut out the hatches to the pre cut edges. Again a good method. There were lots of tricky edges in the forward hatch that needed careful attention.

This one ply took 6 hours by the time I’d peel plied most of it. A few days before this were sanding of course. Then the edges after cure. There is always the sanding…

Cloth layup

Cured

Good fiber:resin ratio

How have I spent so long on this? Its been 9 days of fiddling work. OK with a couple of days doing other stuff. The edges around the hatch cutouts have been taken down to the glass about 0.5″ wide. Then all the foam has been carved back and reduced to a thickness where I can get a smooth transition to these glass edges.That took quite a while going carefully. 60 grit, 80 grit and then 120 grit paper after starting with rasps.

Pic 1 was the starting point after cutting off the top area. Pic 2 shows the checking of thickness in the ‘over the IP’ area. I thought around 10mm would work here. The thickness tool is something I had from the days when I made acoustic guitar tops back in the late 70’s (which I don’t remember of course)

I didn’t want to reduce the IP area too much but of course you don’t want a knife edge here in case of a ‘minor’ accident. I am also mindful of having a bit of thickness to add strength in this area that straps, or makes whole, the sides together at the top.

After glassing the hatches I found after cure that there were lots of bubbles that weren’t there even hours after the layup was done. I guess the pour foam released air during the later part of the cure as it looked fine initially. Given this I have decided to hard shell this underside area of the cutout nose piece, as you see in Pic 3. It might take a couple of micro cures and a lot of sanding. As to the hatches, after I get the connecting pins sorted I’ll re-glass the back area. Its only appearance really of that underside but I do want to maintain a certain standard throughout the build.

Cutouts ready for adjustments

Thickness check

Hardshell micro

Time to glass the little I.P. hatch. As usual, some hours were spent getting it to a manageable thickness. I do want to leave room for instruments below it. I used a router for the initial edges in Pic 1 then hand tools to get the shape you see in pic 2.

You might note the different foam colours as I sanded through to an even thickness over the curve. It means nothing.

Pic 3 has it all laid up with a ply of BID and the last of that weird thick peel ply. You won’t see that again on this build.

Carving…

Carved

Glass and peel ply

Having cut out the nose hatch I spent a couple of days removing some of the foam thickness and preparing an area at the edges of about half an inch pure glass.

The sanding took a while but it finally emerged as you see in pic 2. This part of the hatch work is pretty straight forward. In retrospect I could have hard shelled the foam as prep. It had quite a lot of open cells despite all the sanding. That said I microed in the usual fashion and then added stiff micro in the more open celled areas.

Finally as you see in pic 3 I’d laid up one ply of BID and then peel plied the lot just to be tidy. I think I’ll go back to the old thinner peel ply. This stripped stuff is thicker and it kept bubbling up after a hour or so. I spent the night checking in and pushing down bubbles as the epoxy started to go off. It should be fine, it is not a structural piece although it will add to the strength of the nose area by filling in a giant hole!

Rough shaping

Foam ready

Glassed and peel ply

Drawing out where this hatch goes meant getting a little firmer on how I am going to do this nose thing. A few hours went in just drawing out the position, seems crazy right?.

Eventually I committed as you see in pic 2. The fine saws came out and I again hot glued rulers to the lines to use as straight edges. Its slow going but really works well to get an exact cut.

Pic 3 shows the confusion at the rear of the cutout, or lets just say it needs a little leveling out.

Draw final lines

I.P. Hatch removed

The underside of the nose

After nearly two years I’m back to tweaking the headlight mounting. I spent more than a couple of days on this. I’ve tweaked where the light sits so that when you operate it, its fully up. This is the exact level position now. This means it doesn’t need calibrating for taxi, I just ensure its had a few moments on the up setting and I know it will be level vertically.

I spent a while going from temporary screws to the final ones to hold the light on the bracket. These are not going anywhere.

Next up I wanted to mount the light so that it could be removed with screws from above, not the sides as its hard to get a screwdriver in the nose sideways. I ended up with four beackets as you see in pic 1. I floxed them in place but the next day I could see I was about 2mm off center so I pull it all out again. That proved challenging as my release tapes didn’t release.

After a big cleanup, I remounted the light exactly in the correct place and was VERY careful with release tapes when I floxed it all in again. After the epoxy set I did manage to get it out with a bit of a wiggle. Once screwed in the light is mounted rock solid and OK to maintenance. All good. Move on…

Light brackets

Floxed in position

Solid light fiting

After cutting off the nose I spent a couple of hours cleaning up and digging out a bit of foam. I had to recheck the head light fitting and adjusted the mount a little more. Still a bit to do here. I also spent some time thinking about how in the world am I going to do this nose thing with the hatches and will I use screws or hinges? Which bits to do now and what comes later??? ahgggrrrr

I almost have a plan now… almost. Meanwhile I definitely needed to cut out the hatch. I was going to do a removable nose but realised if I make the hatch forward and wide I may be able to get the light out for maintenance. I also need to install the nose clear lens later and somehow fit the heated pitot without a cut and shut of the nose tip…ouch!

The pitot is still a mystery. I am going to have to make a dummy nose, get in a dark place and do some testing to see if the pitot position will case shadows from the taxi/landing light. I also need to test the submerged tube idea which is hard because my spare/testing altimeter died. That’s another story. I might have to build a wind tunnel and a manometer!!!

Back to the hatch. I spent more than a day just laying it out and thinking about access. I was not happy with the vibration saw cut slicing off the nose. It was not pretty. This time I used really thin hobby saws, Pic 2. I hot glued a ruler to the line as a straight edge and this worked perfectly. For the corner and face curves, I just dragged the tip of the blade very slowly around the line. Once I had a groove more persistence had me cutting a curve right on the line.

I’m much happier with going slowly by hand for this sort of work. Good result. Oh yeah, and I’m not doing screws or hinges for securing the hatch. All will be revealed in later logs.

Lines in the right place

Super careful cuts

Perfect result

I don’t want any air leaking into the cockpit, or at least the minimum I can accept. Its not a pressurised plane after all. My thinking is that if the air from under the plane is blocked in the most convenient places then thats all good. As you can see in pic 2 the nose gear pivot, NG6 is open air with the gear down and probably a good leak source gear up.

It took me a lot of thought to come up with this simple cover. One thing is that I want full access to NG6 because it has thin washes at the side that are really hard to fit. If I ever have to get in here, it should be easy. The next issue was that I wanted screws at the top as its really hard to get a screw driver to the side at this area of the nose. Oh…and I want air circulating around the light so it doesn’t overheat..otherwise I could have boxed the whole thing in.

Then the next issue was that I wanted to make the NG6 area stronger as I was happily cutting it away to fit the head light mount. I had a bit of foam already covered in glass and fitted as you see in pic 3 makes this whole area a lot more rigid.

It turned out to be a crazy amount of work making the aluminium supports, drilling them out, alodine and then the nut plates and floxing in place. The holes in pic 1 are for keying the flox as well as weight reduction.

You can see it fitted in pic 3 and while there is a small gap top and bottom it is really sealed with flox and the support given NG31 was not perfectly flat. It’s very tight on the sides but you can still get the cover out. Of yeah I made hard points in the cover by digging a hole and filling with flox. This is where I drilled for the screws and then counter sunk. Overkill eh?

Support pieces

Floxed supports and cover

NG6 sealed with cover

Well it took a few hours but the nose has been sliced off without major damage. It did hang on for quite a while, its just how these things go.

Pics 1 and 2 show that I have a lot of clean up to do which is always fun. Really it is. Pic 3 shows that I need to have a good think about how I’m going to ensure good access to the light for future maintenance.

It might be a hatch that extends almost to the nose tip. This might also mean I’ll have to use screws rather than a lip or a Jay hinge. I do like the no screws appearance. It will be whatever works and seals properly! I have no idea at this stage.

Nose sliced

Needs a little work

Light position revealed

I decided to hard shell the nose. This is just a coat of epoxy that is cured before the glass layup. I needed to do a bit of filling as well to even out the foam. Otherwise I could just see the glass would trap air. Several days were spent after the first coat of pure epoxy cured. Then I did two rounds of dry micro to fill the pin holes and minor craters in the pour foam.

I’ll need a little more filler post glass to ‘perfect’ the shape. Ha! Well I’ll improve it anyway. This will be the lighter West 410. For this initial fill I used regular stiff micro which applys pretty well with the squeegee. It wasn’t a lot of filler but worth the effort to get a good surface for the cloth.

Once the surface was filled, I dull sanded the whole thing.I’ve made a line down across both sides and decided to glass down to that. I’ll have to invert the fuselage to do the bottom and the canard needs to come off for that because my room is so small and the canard is BIG and awkward. The plan is to cut the top off to do the hatches. Of course then I can get the canard off. I’ll join the top to the sides around the IP as a later step.

All of today was doing the two plies of BID and then peel ply where I’ll be cutting and adding tapes later. After making plastic templates I decided the best move was to just lay a big piece of BID over the nose and then cut away the excess. That excess will get used in small layups later. I did the usual 45 degree bias if only to help the glass go around the corners although its stronger this way. The BID went well around the nose too. Its great stuff compound curves.

After cure I’ll need to cut from the canard to the nose and somehow get the layup to the rear of the canard all apart from the fuselage so I have one giant piece. That’s going to be …interesting.

Hard shell and the micro filler

Laying out the BID

Two plies done

I bite the bullet and covered my nearly done nose in pour foam. As you see in pic one its like someone threw up on it.

After a few more hours I could see the shape I always wanted emerging. It was possible to have nice curves in a short nose after all! I ran out of pour foam but had more a few days later. You can see in pic 2 I really have a curved top and by pic 3, which is today’s effort, well….

A nice space shuttle nose is occurring. A little more smoothing out tomorrow and I’m going to hard shell it before glassing. This means a coat of micro. Once thats on I’ll add a bit extra to fill the gaps before thinking about cloth.

However, there is still some careful filing to be done just in the raw foam.

Pour foam like snot

Now thats a curve

Finally a pleasing shape

Lots more hours over a few days here. I added some foam in pic 1 and in the end I carved it all off again.

After a few days I removed my added side pieces. It just didn’t look right. I kept working and as you see in pic 3 it is all smoothed out and pretty flat on top. A sort of squarish nose but serviceable.

I went to bed that night thinking about excuses for how it looked so square but I didn’t have a way to make it the way I always imagined the nose should be.

Extra foam for height

Sides back and a flat top

Blended and smooth