Left Elevator Started

Started the left elevator today. Its pretty much a duplicate of making the right elevator except for the addition of the trim tab which is cut out from the elevator skin.
Stiffeners are fabbed and clecoed to the skin.




Spar skeleton is fabbed, primed and test fitted to skin. The inner rib is shortened to make room for the trim tab to fit below it.

Right Elevator Continued ...5th day

Riveted the inner rib to the spar.














Riveted on the elevator horn to the spar.














Attaching the outer ribs that hold the counterweights to the spar.














Set the elevator skin and spar skeleton in the jig and started drilling the spar to the skins.














The inner ribs are too small to dimple normally. The Avery vise grip dimpling tool is a vise grip with the two mating dimpler parts welded onto the vise grip jaws. Works great.






































Heavy rain on Christmas Day started pouring in the hanger door as well as creating a deafening cacophony of sound that reverberated off the roof.















Started final riveting.
































The no hole yoke head came in handy to finish riveting at each end of the ribs where there wasnt much room.



















The left elevator is test fitted onto the horizontal stabilizer.
The gap between the counterweight ribs and the horizontal stabilizer looks about right.

Right Elevator Continued ...4th day

Christmas Eve here so only worked for a few hours.
Started by dimpling all of the holes for the spar on the elevator skin. The pnuematic squeezer makes it easy. I had to use the 4" head to reach all of the rivet holes.














Primed and painted both the left and right elevator horns while I had the painted mixed. A finish coat of PPG DAR pairnt was put over the primer to make sure no corrosion happens to the steel horns. I will let them dry overnight before riveting the right horn to the elevator spar.














Started laying out the stiffeners for the left elevator.

Right Elevator Continued ...3rd day

A template was made from 3/4 in angle for the holes that need to be drilled in the elevator skin that mate to the spar.















The template was clamped the each side of the elevator skins and used to drill the spar attach holes into the skin.



















A piece of .032 2024-t3aluminum was used to make the two bands of aluminum that go over the tip of the elevator that projects forward to hold the counterweights.














Since the tips are angles, the pieces look like long boomerangs until they are bent in the middle.



















Ready for test fitting. Pieces were cut 1/4 in oversize and over length. Final fitting will determine actual size and length.














The pieces of the spar skeleton were matched up, fluted and drilled.














The elevator horn was drilled to the spar. Since the spar tapers through the full length, it was hard to get the elevator horn square. The edge of the table was used as one side and the spar was clamped parallel to the table. A 90 degree carpenters square could then be placed on the table edge and the other end of the square was used to line up the horn.














The spar was temporarally attached to the horizontal stabilizer to get the exact distances needed for the rod end bearing and ribs.



















A sharpie was used to draw a line down the center of the spar where the holes would be drilled.
The spar was then inserted into the skin to where the sharpie line could be seen through the center of the holes and clamped and drilled.

Right Elevator Continued ...2nd day

Vans plans call for making a bending brake fromtwo 2 X 8s joined together by hinges. I decided to use my table top as one side of the brake instead. This would give me a stable surface to rest the elevator skins on. So I bolted one side of the hinges directly to the table.

I put an 1/8" rod at the skin bend and taped it in. This is to keep from over bending the skin.
















Below is a picture of the elevator skin in the brake. The brake is about 4"s longer than the elevator skin on either side to use a grips to push down on. The actual bending was quite easy.

Below is the skin at the joint.















The next step is to buid the jig that supports the elevator while riveting the elevator frame to the skin. This is real important to get aligned correctily or you can get a twist in the end of the elevator. I had evidently discarded the particle board V-jigs when I moved hangers so I had to take a trip to Lowes to pick up a piece of 2' x 2' x 3/4" plywood to cut into 3 V-jigs. Fortunately, Vans supplies a drawing for the V-jigs if you need to make your own.

New Elevators for 53L part 1

The elevators on 53L were found to have a severe twist in them from the original builder. This was offset with a large trim tab on the vertical stabilizer. We decided to remake the elevators to remove the twist and replace the .016 skins with .020 skins as many people have reported cracking in the thinnner skins.

The parts from Vans are pretty basic. No holes in the skins like the RV-6 elevator skins, and pieces of aluminum to fabricate brackets from. The elevator horns did come with some lightening holes in them, but not powdercoated as I understand is done with the steel parts on the over higher number RVs.
A lot of time was spent in laying out the lines on the skins to make sure everything was going to line up correctly. Then the stiffeners need to be measured for each position and cut from the supplied 4' sections of angle. The angles have to be cut at an angle at one end when it fits into the tip of the elevator. I used a jig on the drill press to make sure that each hole is in line on the angle.
First row of stiffeners clecoed to the elevator skin.
The other side of the elevator skins was done exactly the same as the first side.
After removing all of the stiffeners, the holes were deburred then it was time to dimple the skins. I use the C frame tool from Averys for this procedure.
















Then dimple all of the stiffeners.
Next is to rough up all surfaces with scotchbrite pad, clean and prime parts.
After drying, the stiffeners are back-riveting to the skin.
I put all the rivets for one side in at a time and cover with tape.



















Between the heavy steel plate under the skin and the back riveting tool for the rivet gun, the riveting went really fast.

VP-50 Installation

I am at the point when I had to make a commitment to the wiring in the new RV-6a I am finishing. About this time, the VP-50 was getting close to shipping and Marc Ausman at Vertical Power approached me about beta testing it since I had beta tested the VP-100. I downloaded the VP-50 load planning worksheet from the Vertical Power website that is used to assign wiring and power to all of the electrical equipment and found out that the VP-50 would work find in the RV-4.
So, the long story short is that I decided to remove the VP-100 from the RV-4 and put it in the RV-6a and put the new VP-50 in the RV-4.
I had a large amount of wiring left over from the installation kit for the VP-100 so I didnt need a complete wiring installation kit for the conversion. Marc loaned me the crimping tool for the connectors that the Control box uses so I could crimp my own connectors.
I started on a Saturday morning and was operational by noon on Sunday, including talking with several visitors who came by the hanger to check out what was happening.
I was hoping that the VP-50 box pattern was as the same as the VP-100 but the VP-50 box is slightly smaller. I had to redo the brackets that attach the VP-50 to the angles in front of the instrument panel. This took several hours to make new brackets, install platenuts, and prime.


The actual wiring was extremely easy as I used my old load planning and new load planning spreadsheets to remove the power pins from connectors one by one and either use them as is in the new connectors or redo the power and ground connects to the various avionics equipment.
The VP-50 doesnt have all of the features of the VP-100 so I had to reinstall my master switch and flap switch. As I still had them available, it was simple to redo them. I had to drill a new whole in the panel to the right of the last switch on the VP-50 switch panel for the flap switch.

Here is the finished panel with the VP-50 installed. The Trio AP was also removed to be installed in the RV-6a and replaced with a Dynon AP for RV4chicks simple VFR fun plane.

Dynon Lean of Peak

We flew to Sedona, AZ for breakfast this morning. On the way there, I was playing with the leaning mode in the Dynon EMS. I was able to get the engine lean of peak without running rough which I hear is pretty rare on carburated engines. I attribute it to the new10-5217 carb that we installed last year. It runs lots smoother and uses less gas than our previous carb. I had noticed that the rpm will decline when leaning before it gets rough so thought it might run LOP. We were told that the 10-5217 incorporates an atomizer on it that more evenly distributes the gas into the incoming air.
Heres proof.

















We were still climbing in this picture. I leveled off at 7500 feet and was able to get the gph down to 58% hp, 6.1 to 6.3 gph at 2350 rpm and 170 mph TAS.
This would give us a range of over 6 hours in our RV-4 (41 gal tanks). We were showing about 22 nautical mpg. Will try this at 10k to 12k and see what happens at the higher altitudes.

Trio Autopilot ReInstalled.

The Trio Autopilot was reinstalled into the panel.

12/16 First Flight with new panel

Dynon repaired the EMS-d10 (solder joint problem) and returned it Friday afternoon so we were able to get everything installed again this weekend. I removed the Trio Autopilot to send back to Trio to get the latest firmware updates. I also removed the panel on Saturday and painted it black (the color RV4chick requested).


















The RV-4 is ready to go after being down for so long.


















We flew to Casa Grande for some cheaper fuel (4.17) versus >5.00 and then to Marana Regional for lunch and then back to Phoenix. Total time about 1.5 hours.
Dynon tries to preserve your settings when you send a unit back, but with mine all of the settings were wiped out so I have to reprogram then because I had not downloaded them to a laptop yet as Dynon suggests. I will definately do that when I get everything reprofiled.
Everything went well. It was really neat to see the TAS, density altitude and relative winds aloft on the Dynons. It felt very strange to fly with the digital readouts instead of analog gauges. Its going to take some time for us to get comfortable with the new setup. One thing that the Dynon EMS showed us was a 60 degree difference between our hottest and coolest cylinder in flight. We will have to redo the baffles to try to get the temperatures evened out.
The VP-100 worked great. It showed about 6 amps being used with all normal daytime avionics powered up in flight including strobes.



















This week I will work on recalibrating everything for the Dynons again and making backups so I can restore the settings in the future if needed. I am also ordering the backup battery from Dynon for the EFIS. This coming weekend RV4chick will finally get to fly her RV-4 after all of the changes I made to it and I can get back to finishing the other RV-4 I am currently building. Hope she likes it.

12/9 VP-100 Start Up Sequence

I thought that while I was waiting for the Engine monitor to arrive, I would show how I use the VP-100 during engine start.
I have decided my start sequence is with all buttons on the VP-100 switch panel turned off.
The first step to to press and release the button on the VP-100 switch panel to turn on the VP-100. The VP-100 goes thru its test sequence and then shows the current volts and amps being used and the button turns green.


















The next step is to run the boost pump which primes the line to the carburator. I currently have the boost pump on switch 3, but it can be programmed to any of the buttons. You can see that my volts dropped from 12 volts to 11.7 and the amps increased from .5 to 1.3 amps while running the boost pump.



















The next steps are mixture rich, crack the throttle and use the keyed ignition switch to start the engine. When the engine starts, I move the first switch from its center position to the up position. This engages the primary alternator. If I moved the first switch to the down position, it would engage the backup alternator.
The volts now show 14.4 volts and indicate that the alternator is charging the battery.


















Turning on switch 2 engages the rest of the avionics. The switches have a colored led in the tip of the switch. A green light indicates there are no problems with the circuits that are controlled by the switch. If there is a problem, the led at the end of the switch turns red.



















With every light and avionics engaged, the RV-4 uses 24.6 amps. The Plane Power 60 amp alternator should be able to handle this load with no problem.


















For shutting down, I turn every switch off and then mixture to idle to stop the engine and mags off.


















Final step is to hold the button on the VP-100 in for about 3 seconds and then the VP-100 turns off.
The starting sequence is really not that much different from our old system, but for the first time, we am really aware of what is going on with the electrical system. If any problems show up, the VP-100 will alert us immediately. Between its monitoring of the electrical system and the engine monitoring of the Dynon EMS, and the Garmin 496 audio warnings, hopefully, we will know right away when any problems occur and we can spend more time looking outside the cockpit instead of at the instruments.

12/8 Garmin 496 audio hookup

When I went to the airport last Sunday to fly, the Dynon EMS would not boot up. So I overnighted it to them last Monday. I am expecting it back this week so we should finally be able to get 53L back in the air.
I decided to hook up the audio output from the Garming 496 to the intercom while we am waiting. The Garmin 496 outputs a stereo signal through a 1/8 " stereo female connector on the back of it. Since my PS1000 II intercom is mono, I needed to adapt to it.
This required a trip to Radio Shack to pick up a 1/8 stereo male to male extension and a 1/8 female stereo to 1/8 male mono jack.


















Its only a short distance from the Garmin 496 to the aux jack for the intercom so I didnt need a very long cable. Radio Shack had a 1 ft connector so I was in luck.


















The "Sound" setup menu for the Garmin controls the sound options.
I turned the Audio Volume up about 3/4 of the way and turned the Terrain Audio to On.
I left the TIS Audio off since I dont have a mode S transponder connected yet.
The Audio Jack option has two settings Headphones or Line Out. I used the Headphones settings and a set of Sony Walkman ear buds to test the sound, but changed the setting to Line Out for the connection to the intercom.




















The next screen shows the "XM" setup. We havent activated the XM music subscription yet, but there are still 4 channels that you can receive without a subscription. A preview, news, sports and emergency alert channel. These channels work real good to test the audio output.
When you press the "Menu" key while in this screen, an option pops up that lets you mute or enable the sound.



















The audio output worked great on the PS1000 II intercom. Whenever a radio transmission is received it mutes the audio from the GPS and then gradually increases the volume back to the original level after the radio transmission ceases.
Alerts will also sound through the intercom. Garmin uses a female voice to announce the alerts as well as a tone.