Misc

May 5, 2014 Angle and bar for assorted brackets, hinges, and motor mount marked and ready for cutting and drilling. Cut a 4' stick of C-channel for axle brackets (4) and wing TD/Comp brackets (14). Probably not the proper use for a miter saw, but it sure beats cutting by hand with a hacksaw. It does, however, leave a lot of flashing and somewhat rough edges to file, but at least nice and straight.

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May 6, 2014 Drill press set up for drilling tubes. Before you begin you need to draw a perfectly straight line down the length of the tube. I did this by simply laying  a 'sharpie' pen on a table or floor and sliding it along the length of the tube. Then you mark bolt locations with a cross mark on the center line. Level your drill press front to back with shims. Clamp in a piece of angle and set it level front to back. Chuck a 1/8" bit. Position the drill press table clamp until the tip of the bit doesn't deflect when it touches the bottom of the angle's V when the head is lowered. Bolt or lock the clamp to the press table. Set tube in angle V and support the long end so the tube is flat to the V. C-clamp the tube to the V. Drill pilot holes all the way through. They will be perfectly centered on the tube. Replace bit with final diameter size and drill again. Remove C-clamp and position tube for next hole location and reclamp.  To drill holes in a tube that are at a 90 degree angle to already existing holes: Insert a drill bit that firmly fits into an existing hole. Turn the tube in the drill press V setup so the bit is horizontal. Place a bubble level on top of the bit and adjust tube until level... a small horizontal plumb line level works great (the kind you hang on a horizontal string). C-clamp the tube to the V and recheck/readjust level. Drill holes as before.

Drilling 1/8" pilot holes for 1/4" holes in my 4130 chromoly axle. I positioned the solid axle stubs in the tube so that it was drilled at the same time, giving perfect hole "registration." Drilling out the pilot holes with the final diameter drill bit (1/4").

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May 7, 2014 Fabricating elevator hinges from 1" x 1" x 062 angle. Before: at right During: being held showing hacksaw cuts, After: final part with bend and rounded corners at top. After cutting a 1" long slot in the long leg with the blade against the inside face of the short leg, I bent the "tab" over with my thumb and then tightened it up with a few taps of a hammer along the bent edge.

Rounding the sharp corners with a flat file. 6 hinges, 3 for each elevator, composed of 12 pieces, ready to be riveted to the horizontal stabilizer and elevators (after they've been covered with fabric). These are "precision" designed to allow the elevator to rotate 180 degrees forward to lay on top of the stabilizer without any hardware impingement when in transportation configuration. Hinge "pins" will be AN3-4 bolts and castle nuts with an 1/8" plastic washer between each hinge leaf.

UPDATE September 2019:  1/16" thick angle stock is NOT strong enough (top two samples in photo at right). The tips of the folded up elevators hit the top of my 9 foot roll-up door jamb a few times when taking the plane out or putting it back in my shed, which bent the hinges. I would then have to straightened them out with vise grip pliers. This created metal fatigue and one day, while I was flying, the outside starboard hinge failed, causing the elevator to flop around when moved. It did NOT fall off, because the inboard hinge, elevator horn yoke tube, and air stream kept it in place until I landed and discovered the failure. I fabricated four new hinges from 1/8" thick 1-1/8" C-channel (bottom sample in photo). I also removed the middle hinge, since the new, double-leafed hinges doubled the number of hinge pin holes. The thicker hinges are FAR stronger and rigid. Longer AN-3 bolts and an additional nylon washer for the added leaf were also needed. 

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May 22, 2014 I must thank Bohanna Sage, a member of the Weedhopper Yahoo Group, for recommending this small, $25, but oh-so-powerful American Made and finely machined piece of tool steel... the Big Gator V-drill Guide! Clamp it to a tube and it's small v-notch on the bottom precisely positions the guide on the exact center of the tube, while it's perfectly vertical guide hole gets your hand drill perfectly vertical for perfectly vertical through holes. Did I say "perfectly vertical" enough times? :-P October 7, 2018 Certified aircraft anti-collision/position/navigation strobe lights are insanely expensive and not friendly to ultralight use, in terms of package shape and mounting requirements. Since strobes for ULs don't need to be certified, I bought ready-made, mini hide-away strobes, commonly used in emergency and other service vehicles, from http://superbrightleds.com. I bought their MSTRB-360-R (red) and MSTRB-360-G (green) 360-degree, 18-watt (2 amp) units for $40 each. They feature a built-in, 36-pattern flasher, instead of an external, in-line flasher module that other similar strobes use. These strobes, with six, 3-watt Cree LED, are extremely bright for their size -- to the point you can't look directly at them! Installation was easy. Since I had already pre-wired the wings for power, I simply attached the strobes to aluminum angle brackets, then riveted the brackets to the wing tip spar tubes. The strobes have a yellow wire to sync two or more units together, so that they flash in unison using the same pattern number or alternately if one unit uses the opposing phase pattern. Because I would have to cut into my wing to pull a third wire through to add sync capability, I just let the two units run independently. Because their flash rates are not exactly the same with the sync wire disconnected, they will slowly go in and out of phase, flashing alternately and then in unison and back again every few minutes. 3" long brackets made of 1" angle, drilled for 3/16" rivets on the top edge, and on the facing edge a 3/8" hole for the strobe's wires to pass through, and two smaller holes for the strobe's self-tapping mounting screws. Mounted and ready to power... easy as that. I selected pattern #22 by tapping the blue wire to ground that many times. The bare ends of both yellow and blue wires were taped to keep them from shorting and inserted into the wing tip's wire exit hole to keep them out of the air stream.