RivetBangers.com

While a lot of you guys were up playing around at Osh, some of us were back in Ohio working and moving into a house with a garage and taking delivery of a RV-8 wing kit and entertaining a girlfriend and starting wing contsruction!

It feels good to be back building again and especially good to be building not in my living room (although it was much more temperate in there). It's taken me a while to update my site as I just got internet again but the nutplate misery of the spars is done and the rear spar gets riveted together this afternoon!

The mountain of wing ribs lay ahead in the very near future...

Excellent! As far as the ribs, one at a time, and it will pass.



Spike

Brett,

If Michele and I had more time on our way through Ohio (spent time with cousin in Cleveland) I was going to look you up!

Glad to hear that you are making good progress!!!

Hang in there! The wings were tough for me. If not for Wicked Stick, I am not sure what I would be doing now!

CJ

The garage is always open! I like meeting people and getting as many eyes on rivets as possible.

Just a little update to some people who will appreciate the progress . (I was telling my mom about my progress and after about a 15 minute update she asked, "What's a cleco?" )

The wings no longer are naked. They tried on their skin for the first time!



Speaking of progress, does anyone know of a tech counselor in Dayton that can come by and take a look at my work (or at least how to find one)?

Looks great Brett!

Keep up the good work!

CJ

looks great Brett! You are not to far behind me.

I started sealing the tanks. In fact, I followed Chad's site and tried the fay sealing technique. I've got a bun in the oven (right tank in the garage) cooking up as we speak and will shoot some rivets on it tomorrow.

If it leaks can I blame Chad now...?

Details are on the two most recent updates: http://www.rv8plane.com.

cbkillion wrote:If it leaks can I blame Chad now...?

You sure can...I won't take the blame, but you can blame me.

I'm sure it will work out great!

So say you have some fuel tanks built and are pressure testing them with a manometer. When is it safe to say they are leak free?

I set my right tank up and pressurized it last night. I checked every single rivet and joint and there are no leaks visible with soapy water. Over the course of the night (about 10 hours) the water level dropped by approximately an inch. It was setup in my living room so the temperature was pretty much constant. Also the atmospheric pressure dropped some overnight so the water level at a constant atmospheric pressure may have actually dropped more than an inch.

Would you say that this tank is leak free? If there are no leaks evident via the soapy water method, how would I find this small leak?

You have to decide for yourself when good is good enough, but it sounds like you checked it quite extensively.

Even the smallest of leak should show up with the soapy water test, I had a heck of a time getting rid of the tiny leaks at the drain port valve I was using to pressurize the tanks with.

Something I did to give myself a nice warm fuzzy about there being no leaks was to do both at the same time. If they both went up and down (the water level) the same amount, I was pretty sure they didn't leak. I left mine for a couple of days and figured there is no way they could both leak the same amount over that time.

Temperature and pressure will make the water level vary. A significant leak will make the water level go all the way down and never recover.
When I tested mine the water level in the tubing varied a bit, but always stayed close to the initial level within an inch or so. I guess I'll find out if they are really leak free when I fill them with gas.

The two manometers is a really good idea. My right tank has since gone back up and generally stayed in the ballpark of where it started so I am calling it good. Now onto the left tank!

So I am to the point where I need to buy my landing lights but $500 seems a little outrageous. If I were to buy the duckworks round hole installation kit only and then supply my own lights, what would I need?

Checking eBay, I saw an auction for 2 Xenon HID bulbs, 2 digital HID ballasts, and the wiring and connectors for $35. This seems a little on the cheap end to me but would this be all I need to get myself up and running at night?

I know I would also need the bulb housing. Should I get spot or flood or one of each?

Duckworks sells a blank kit with no holes for lights. That is what I bought. By the time I fly I'm hoping that LED's will come way down in price. If it needs a certain size hole for mounting, or if the lights mount on a flat surface, I will be able to adapt what I have.

So I feel like I hit a milestone today and I felt like sharing. The wings are off the stand and into the cradle! It feels like it's taken forever to get to this point...

From the today's entry in my website:


By the way, the swiveling lockable rubber wheels on the cradle are awesome. The construction details are all in the log here.

Nice Brett!! It's always quite motivating to have a bunch of pieces end up looking like that!

Sweet. The wings were tedious but gave a really good feeling of success. Congratulations ...

Spike

I've run out of things to do on the wings besides the pitot and wiring and bottom skins which leaves me with some questions.

I've installed the conduit but don't have any wires run but I did run a string down the conduit. If I put the bottom skins on, will that string take care of getting the wires easily to the tip or should I install as many as I can before the skins go on?

Also, if I just run the AOA/pitot tubing but don't install my Dynon pitot tube now, will it be extremely difficult to hook up later or is it pretty easy to plumb the tube up as long as the pressure lines are already in the wing?

Can't answer specifically on the Dynon pitot, but run enough string in your conduit so you can pull it both ways without pulling the string out, and you will be fine. No need to run multiple strings when one long one pull back and forth with do.