Scott & Tanya Card RV9A build log (N4822C)

I spent a little time this evening working on the ground power receptacle modification to be able to attach a wire with a ring terminal to the end. The bolt that I soldered to the end is a brass toilet bowl mount bolt. And wouldn’t you know it, I just so happened to have more than one floating around the garage! No, I didn’t steal it from in the house. I don’t think Tanya would have been too happy to sit down on the can and find it a little loose all in the name of experimental aircraft construction! (It could happen in a pinch.)

 

  

  

  

 

Hmmm… Where am I going to put all of this stuff?

I’m going to install a Piper style ground power receptacle. There is a bit of a trick to modifying it in order to be able to connect a wire to it. I’m going to try the AeroElectric suggestion http://www.aeroelectric.com/articles/grndpwr.pdf

Also, I did a little bit of contactor draw testing. Both style continuous duty (one lug and two lug) draw 0.7A at 12V, and the starter contactor draws 3.2A@12V.

 

  

  

  

  

 

I hereby declare the canopy COMPLETE! I’ll admit it, I’m sick of working on the canopy. I did a few more minor fill, sand, prime, sand iterations. There comes a point when you just have to stop messing with the forward fairing. I’m pretty happy with it. The critical edge came out pretty good.

Next up was to flip it over and work on the glareshield light strip. Thanks to Watson for donating one of his (many) dog beds to set the canopy on upside down on the bench. I’m using an electroluminescent strip glued to the underside of the glareshield for primary panel light. I scuffed the painted glareshield and the back of the light strip with some 100 grit sandpaper. I long ago made peace with proseal so it is my glue of choice. I ran the wires along the left side of the canopy frame, under the brace, in some expanding sleeve (cool stuff). I have the wires exiting near the left pivot. We’ll see how this exit point works out later.

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

I decided to look into fabricating the strip at the firewall that holds the camlocks that attaches the cowl. In a previous order with Vans, I ordered some custom cut ($5 per cut) .063″ aluminum sheet to make these out of. I am convinced that it is well worth the cost of having big stuff like this custom cut so I am not spending a few hours gnawing on it with hand tools trying to cut a straight line. I don’t have a foot shear (yet!) that can reliably produce long straight cuts in sheet. Especially .063. Oh well, I don’t need to justify spending a little to make my life a whole lot easier. I can’t wait to move into the hangar, more space for cool machinery.
I did some camlock hole layout on the sides and top. More just guessing than anything else. I don’t think I’m going to have even spacing all the way around. So far, I’m thinking (what I have marked so far) 4″ spacing across the top, and about 3.5 around the top curve and down the sides. We’ll see. I spent some time cutting the strips to length, applying the correct bends, and filing a slight radius on the inside edge at the firewall flange. I have extra material just in case… UPDATE: four months later, as I’m installing the cowl, I decided to reduce the width of the camloc strip by 1/8″ after I had all of the attach holes drilled. There was just a little extra material in the width that I didn’t need. So, the perfect width would have been 1-13/16″

 

  

  

  

 

Tanya helped me put the canopy back on (and off, and on, and off…) again so I could work on the latches. I used this opportunity to tinker a little more with the forward canopy skin fit. Even with my Big Fat Gap (BFG) up there, I still found it necessary to bend the center section of the canopy skin up just a bit and file a slight bevel on the forward skin in order for everything to clear. Then on to the objective, drilling the rear side canopy latches to the canopy frame. This is a bit of a funky operation that I had not been looking forward to. So, my M.O. dictates that I dive in and just do it :). I marked a center line on the latch bracket and inserted the latch into the hold-down finger thingy, crawled into the cockpit, closed the canopy, held the latch up as high as it would go, sighted the center line through the previously drilled holes in the canopy frame, had Tanya hold pressure on the latch with a tongue depressor, and spun a drill bit in the first hole a few turns to mark the hole. Yep, it was about as interesting to do as that sentence was to write :). With one hole marked, I drilled it in the drill press, rinse and repeat four times. I think they came out fine. Maybe just a hair tight.

Then I moved on to making some small guide blocks out of Delrin. This is a carbon copy of what Jeff Bordelon did. He was even nice enough to give me a small hunk of material to fab these out of. They make a big difference in the smoothness of operation of the canopy in the last couple of inches of closing. They’re also very easy to construct and install. Great design Jeff! If I were to do them again (I could), I would make them a little taller. Maybe +.5″. They are currently 2″ high.

I also got the top center canopy latch handle squared away. Piece of cake. After all of that, the canopy came back off, possibly for the last time? Back to work on the forward fairing. I got some sanding primer so I can proceed with this little task. Sanding, priming, filling, sanding, priming, filling, sanding….