Fuselage - Cabin

2006-10-07 - The electric flaps. (5.5 Hrs).

Installed the nutplates for the F-680 bearing block, fab'd the F-766C plate and the F-766B angle.

Drilling the holes for the nutplates to hold F-680. You can see that the AFT nutplate interferes with one of the nutplates that holds the F-748 tunnel cover. The nutplates fit if I turn the AFT nutplate at an angle.
This is the problem. The F-680 bearing block does not have the hole for the weldment centered, but the plans show the hole in the middle of the block. Maybe we were supposed to shorten the block. I can't do that now, because F-748 has already been trimmed to fit the longer block.
And the final result? Looks like I missed it by a hair, but the nutplates are functional--move on.
F-680 bolted in place using the nutplates. I won't say how long I spent getting the bolt in the FWD nutplate, but I am over an hour-and-a-half into the session this morning, and all I have done is 2 nutplates and 2 bolts installed. So, what's the problem here? The FWD nutplate is an AN-MS21051-L3. This means only one side of the nutplate is supported. The F-705 flange causes the nutplate to not be perpendicular to the floor. This requires the bolt to be inserted at an angle. You cannot insert the bolt at an angle, because the hole in F-680 is drilled perpendicular to the floor. Pushing too hard on the bolt, causes the nutplate to bend, which makes the problem worse. The solution is to provide solid support for the nutplate when inserting the bolt. I found that one of my bucking bars did the job.

One problem was that Van gave me five AN-22A-3 bolts and one AN-20A-3 bolt. Guess which bolt I tried to use for the FWD bolt in F-680, before I noticed it was too short? Also, I wasted a lot of time looking for my 3/8" nutdriver, which I have concluded is probably lying under the seat floors.

Next step is to fab F-766C. Van conveniently supplied a piece of AB6-125x1 cut to exact dimensions. Of course, I found this piece in a bag under the bench. Later, I found the same piece in the bag that came with the flaps. Piece of advice, look in bag 926-3 which came with the flaps. Almost everything that you need for the electric flaps is there.
F-766C, nicely radiused and holes drilled. Oops, instructions say to only drill the index hole now. I've always said you need to be able to follow directions in order to build an airplane. Hope I'm wrong.
Ready to cutoff a 2" piece of AA6-125x1x1 for F-766B.
The plans show the bottom of F-766B as 3/4", so you need to cut 1/4" off of the bottom angle. The part fits without cutting the 1/4" off, and I almost didn't do this, but you gotta save the weight where you can. If Van says to cut it off, might as well cut it off, only takes a few minutes.
Top part of F-766B marked, ready to trim.
F-766B, all done, except I drilled the bolt hole in the wrong spot. Probably shouldn't have drilled the hole in the first place. Let's see if we can use this part anyway.
Well, F-766B is history. I driled F-766A and F-766C to F-766B, so the part should have been salvaged. Unfortunately, I drilled the holes that attach F-766B to F-766A before fitting the motor, and as you can see here, I managed to screw that up. BTW, this is where I figured out that I should not have cut F-766B from the 17" piece of AA6-125x1x1. If I had looked inside bag 926-3, I would have found the pieces already cut to length.
Ok, I fab'd another part. Only, this time, I did not do the finish work on it in case I screw this up, again. On this part, I drilled it to F-766A before drilling the 1/4" hole for the bolt that attaches the motor.
Looks like things fit, ok. Also, you can see that I whipped out the F-766D spacer. That's enough screw-ups for the day.