Lol thanks aeronut! The second wing builds fast! Update on varnishing gadget..... Works AWESOME!!! The first wing took me about 9 hours plus 2 1/2 on aileron. Today, total time to varnish entire wing AND Aileron.... 3 hours 50 minutes. That saves nearly 8 hours of work or 2/3 off the time! Nice! Very quickly you find a nice rhythm and never stop except to refill container! I experimented with natural hair vs vinyl bristles. Natural hair wins hands down!!! BTW  Wing 2 drying but completed!!!! Now to move her to hanger space. Going to extend bench 2 feet and onto the fuse!!! Thank you everyone for the help, advice and words of encouragement! You are all a great group of guys!

Here are the pics

Good progress, Brix.

I love the auto feed varnish brush! I'm going to make one of those - anything that makes varnishing less hassle has got to be good. If it works as well as you say, I might even go for two coats.

Good luck with your fuselage build. I'm sure you'll enjoy it after building two wings in a row. Fuse comes together much quicker I reckon.

Bruce

I agree Bruce. Varnishing is tedious at best! Although this does not reduce the tedium. It does reduce the amount of time spent on the process! Give it a try, I think you are really are going to be impressed! I am looking forward to the next phase of the build. This upcoming week will be preparing the workbench and shop for the fuselage ! Merry Christmas everyone!

Merry CHRISTmas to you too Brix. Your present is almost here.

Monte

Just an update... Both wings at the hanger along with the vertical/ horizontal stabilizer. I had an EAA technical  advisor come by......BTW he made a spectacular entrance by flying in with his immaculent RV-8. He built it over an 8 year period. Quite an entrance! And WOW! what an airplane! He is quite satisfied with my work up to this point. All he recommended is a bit more rounding off around the edges of the aluminum root / strut fittings! Only lost. 0.4 pounds this week. But I an very happy with any loss over Christmas week. I should have bench extended this week and start gluing on the fuse sides by weekend!

I went back a few pages to find your picture of the root fittings. Look OK as far as I can tell from here.
What was his concern?

His main concern Was  when I rounded the ends on the fittings I used a disc sander. That left sharp edges. He recommended I clean up the ends and round off those edges with a 3M scotch brite wheel on my grinder! He admits it is most likely unnecessary.

Dear bigbrixx,

Maybe it was necessary to round and smooth those edges, maybe it wasn't.  However I can say that as a general principle in making virtually any part a rounded and very smooth edge and corners, whether metal, wood, or a number of other materials, makes it much harder for stress to find a little spot where the stress rises to the point where the fitting can start to fatigue.  Therefore a metal fitting with sharp corners practically speaking is more likely to fail than an nearly identical fitting with carefully rounded and smoothed corners.  Also believe it or not the rounded, smoothed, and polished edges and corners will LOOK stronger too and will be more beautiful.  It really doesn't take much extra effort and you will be amazed how great it makes you feel to "detail" fittings this way.

Tom

Tom I couldn't agree more!  I have ordered the wheel he recommended! I am so thankful to have a technical advisor close by, willing to give up his time. Come inspect my efforts and offer advice. I plan on following all his recommendations!

I think Bob Daly might have some useful and interesting things to add on this too.

Tom

TTT, I could be wrong but I think the only ROOT fittings on the wing are on the SPARS not the struts..

Do you play ping pong?????????

Thanks for the support guys. Thanks TTT for the compliment. I have been trying to build  her as if my life may depend upon it! I have been calling the fittings that go from the spars to the carry thru, root fittings. And the fittings that go from midwing at a 30 degree angle that will connect to the wing struts strut fittings. All are made from aluminum stock. I hope I have been using correct terms. I can see the confusion it appeared as if root/ strut was one fitting. I should have said root fittings and strut fittings! Those are the fittings he suggested I clean up a bit more

Here is a good pic. Root fittings seen clearly  here. Strut fitting midwing at 30 degree angle. I am I using correct terms? Sorry about confusion if I am not!

There has been a lot about the teleflex  cables. Both good and bad. I really don't know enough about aircraft controls to redesign the system. All the re-designs seem to be the highmax and not easily converted to the mid wing version..... That being said the route route I plan on taking (and already have in my possession) is to upgrade the aileron controls to 1/4 size teleflex cables and duel elevator teleflex cables mandated in the UK version. As a matter of fact I plan on incorporating all of the UK mods including roll protection. And LG changes! Agian TTT thanks for the kind words!!!!

As far as oratex I love the concept. Would really love to give it a try. Price is going to be the deciding factor. I plan on sending them the dimensions and get a price quote. That being said I doubt I can justify the expense on the max. But you never know!!!!

I really hate to comment on the whole Teleflex "thing", but I would point out that I've seen some alternatives made in which the person designing the new system did not calculate the shear stress on the bolts that hold it together and therefore had a much weaker system than the Teleflex.  I've also seen extensive use in aircraft in general of the compressed copper sleeve used to make an eye around a thimble in cable.  These though used a lot on aircraft do fail.  I would strongly suggest that if you want to modify the Teleflex system the safest thing is probably to double up on the elevator Teleflex as shown in the modifications for Britain.  I would also replace the short length of plastic tube which is supposed to reduce the bending stress on the MiniMax installation with a self aligning bearing at that point.  Having worked a lot with Teleflex cables I think those two modifications would be safer than trying to design your own system from scratch unless you have a good grounding in structural analysis.

Tom

Hi TTT as far as I am concerned. Please keep the comments and attaboys coming. If I wanted just a build log I Never would have made it public. I welcome the interaction on the board. As a matter of course I routinely print out a few pages of this log. Edit and then add to a hard copy folder for the DAR when the time comes. That way (god forbid) if anything happens to this electronic log I don't loose everything. I thank you all who take the time to encourage my progress see a mistake I may have made and point me in the right direction. Thank you to those who add thought provoking ideas and answer my questions.
Happy new year folks
Not as big as I used to be Brian

Brixx,

As discussed in the strobe thread,  if you're going to put position lights and/or wing tip strobes on your plane,  it would be easier to run the wire before you cover the wings.

happy new year folks.  GreT idea termite. Right now I plan to use only one strobe on the horizontal stab. But would like to run tubes in the wing now. Anybody have a good souce of lightweight tubes I can put in wing. ???

Depends on the size of wire but I think pex tubing from the big box store would work

Maybe vinyl tubing would work? It would be around the plumbing area in a hardware store.

I considered plastic tubing. But it's really to heavy. Was hoping for something like a small diameter cardboard tube.


Now back to the build. Workbench extended to 14 feet. Fuse outline laid out. First problem was the scarf joint. After a few poor attempts I resorted to These basic jigs. Using extra material I glued 2 x 4 blocks to either side. Then when piece clamped into jig the pressure of clamps holds the piece in place. Then a hand plane will give you a perfect scarf joint.
Examples ......

Fuse layout completed. All parts cut out ready to glue. I plan to build one side on top of other side so both identical. I used green masking tape then drew lines on tape. That way I don't mark up bench. My straight edge is center of bench. I can then use that line to jig fuse sides later on.

Tubes only add weight that you don't want and you can run wires from one of the wing to the other after the wing is covered by removing the aileron............

Or just run a couple wires out to the wing tip now? Anchor as needed. No tube required.

All great ideas. I would line a tube of some type. For access and protection. In the rc world some planes use a cardboard tube protected by a varnish. I believe the term is phenolic tube. Trying to find something like that in 3/4 inch size. Very light weight. I ordered plastic tubes from us plastics but they were way to heavy. I returned them

I don't know what kinds of tubing you considered or checked out, but polyethylene tube might be something to look at if you want a conduit in place before covering the wings. I have no idea of how many, or what guage wires you have in mind, but I'm pretty sure you could easily fish a couple 16 or 18 GA wires through 3/8" O.D. Polyethylene tube. One advantage of polyethylene vs vinyl tube is that it wouldn't be as "droopy" between supports as vinyl.

Lynn  

Re: tubing -- check out flourescent tube covers.  These are pretty light and can be found in 8' lengths.  Probably larger than you need in that length though (1.5").  I think there are some smaller ones in about 4' length for smaller bulbs.

Could also make your own cardboard tube.  With your modeling background you have probably seen this? take brown packing paper and laminate it as though it was fiberglass.  Can squeegee epoxy on the paper and roll it around a mandrel.  It would be possible to use thinned water based aliphatic resin glue as well.

Is a full tube really required?  What about wire guides/holders with a wire pulling string added?  Wires pull a lot easier than push and a string can be pretty light.

IMHO,  tubing should not be needed.  Kunzleman sells 22ga. 5 conductor wire for  60 cents per foot, and 3 conductor for 40 cents per foot.  http://www.kestrobes.com/heads.htm.   The wires are in a shielded plastic sheathing, like phone wire.  If you insist on running tubing, you could use fuel line.  You wouldn't even have to use a continuous run,  just put it over the wire anywhere the wire touches wing ribs, spars, etc,  for abrasion protection.