Monthly Archives: October 2020

LH Fuel Tank Fitment, Plan B – Vertical Stands

With a seat-of-the-pants concept, a circular saw and a box of screws, I’ve managed to fashion a pair of Sling 2 custom vertical wing panel stands. Poof! It all came together.

With the LH wing panel on the stands, I’ve got much better access. Hopefully this will be the day I get the tank mounted.

Unfortunately, most of the same fit and alignment issues persist. This is starting to feel like Fuel Tank Fitment Hell.

Before I do something that’s un-recoverable, I’ll reach out to Jean d’Assonville at Sling Aircraft (TAF) USA before it gets any later in the day. It’s Friday and hopefully I can get out of this hell before the weekend. Stay tuned.

LH Fuel Tank – Final Fit (or Not)

The LH wing panel assembly has been back up on the workbench for several days. I can’t see any reason not to tackle permanent mounting of the fuel tank.

Well – I found a few reasons to not mount the tank today. I’m struggling to fully fit the tank and to align the rivet holes. I don’t have convenient access to the bottom surface of the wing panel. Gravity doesn’t seem to be helping either.

There’s a curious mix of places where rivets fit easily and squarely and other places where they won’t fit squarely, or at all. I’ll have to shift to Plan B. I think that means building some sort of stand(s) to hold the wing panel in a vertical leading-edge-up orientation.

LH Landing Light – Lens Retainer Strips

Several months ago, I’d taken a look at the landing/taxi light lenses and what it might take to mount them nicely. The LH wing panel was sitting horizontally on a workbench at the time.

About the first thing I noticed was that the mounting holes around the perimeter of the lens did not all correspond to the holes in the wing where the lights and the lens go. The holes lined up (pretty well) with the lens on the outside of the skin, but not when I put the lens in the opening, behind the skin – where it really belongs.

The other thing wasn’t really so much something I noticed, but rather, I realized that I needed to find a better solution for mounting the lens than the factory provided for – sheet metal screws through the skin and into the plexiglass lens. That’s just not going to cut it.

Now I had another classic opportunity for inspirational procrastination. I put the time to good use. It took weeks, but once again – procrastination paid off! The idea of retainer strips with anchor nuts came early. I also found that I’d likely use #4-40 hardware, because metric MK-1000 nut plates are absurdly expensive and challenging to source in the US. I hate mixing hardware standards on this bird, but that’s just how it goes. The blind anchor nuts on retainer strips behind the lens stuck in my head as an obvious solution.

What was not obvious to me at the time, was how to hold the retainers in place so that the lens could be fitted and fastened with the little screws. I made a prototype with a hand-cut strip of 0.020 aluminum and held the anchor nuts with AN426AD-3-3 solid flush rivets. The strip was flimsy and I attempted to hold it against the backside of the lens with – if you can believe it – sewing thread. Once I got the screws started, I’d pull the thread out. I was too unwieldy.

Weeks went by. Then it hit me – the same basic idea, but with 0.5 x 0.025 stainless steel strips, held to the plexiglass lens with little #4 CSK screws and ny-lock locknuts. I had to make new holes in the bottom half of the lens to match the wing, made six retainer strips and mounted them to the lens. Now I have a lens that is easily installable and removable. I’ve come to believe that this is what the factory does for the Sling TSi and I might have seen it if I’d looked at the TSi construction manual. Oh well. I got there. I’ll repeat the fitting and fabrication process for the RH lens assembly.

CF – Control Tubes, Brackets and Bearings

Mounting the control tubes in the center fuselage is very much like the process for the rudder pedals. Once again, clearance and alignment prove to be the main variables.

A couple of important discoveries made a big difference. The first discovery was that the elevator and flap torque tubes are not perfectly straight. They’re close, but they are not absolutely perfect. With an ever so slight bow and four bearing points, over a meter of distance, the centers of the bearing bores present different impacts, depending on rotational position of the tube. The variations are tiny, but if the bearing clearances are too tight – you get a surprising amount of binding.

The other discovery was that not all of the bearings have identical inner diameter. It’s a long story, but I ended up with a few extras and happened to find one that has good bit looser fit on the elevator torque tube.

The bearing with the looser fit proved to be ideal, when I put it at the LH end of the elevator torque tube. Careful dressing of the fuselage brackets and the retainer brackets with the Dremel sanding drum resulted in perfect fits everywhere – and fantastically smooth action.

Careful observation of how the bores of individual bearings center around the tube allowed me to ever slightly shift those centers in good directions as I opened the U-shaped bearing capture areas to eliminate pinching of the bearings around the tube. Each custom fit retainer bracket and bearing is marked for a specific location and orientation. I’m confidently optimistic that there will be just enough clearance for friction free operation after the retainers are permanently riveted.

At the moment, the flap torque tube movement is good, but it isn’t quite a limber as the elevator tube. It’s not of great concern. The flaps are driven by a linear actuator and won’t be anything I notice in the hand controls, which will be effortlessly smooth.

The two main control stick tubes are each supported by a pair of bearings along the roll axis. The front bearing is captured by brackets with U-shaped retainers, top and bottom, that are rigidly riveted to the structure at the front of the main wing spar carry-through.

The upper retainer should have been riveted before the carry-through structure was mated with the surrounding center fuselage members. This is another instance of the factory failing to comply with documented assembly details.

I can’t really get good enough access for confident pulling of 4,0 x 10mm rivets, so I’m going to use screws and elastic stop-nuts for the uppermost holes and (probably) use rivets for the balance of bracket mounting holes. I’ve got to end up with good alignment and enough clearance so that the bearings don’t bind when the brackets get pulled down. I’m certain that the retaining brackets are going to shift slightly from their un-riveted positions. I might use screws after all. That would make it reasonably straightforward to take it all apart and re-tweak the final fit until I get it right. Absolutely no binding will be tolerated. Smooth, smooth, perfectly smooth – that’s how it will be. Period.

LH Aileron – Finishing Up

The LH aileron had been languishing under the bed in my guest bedroom with the skin cleco’ed in place. It just needed the outboard rib with the reworked hinge brackets.

Riveting the skin on the bottom went well. Now it’s back under the bed again, with and in the same state as its buddies. Final riveting of ailerons and flaps will wait until I’m in the mood to fit them on the wing assemblies. That might even wait until I have the wings joined to the fuselage. We’ll see. I think that decision depends on what I decide to do about painting. Fly first or paint first? Yes – another excellent opportunity for inspirational procrastination.