1.9 Hours -
Today is my girlfriend’s birthday, but, since she has to spend her birthday at school, I get to work on the plane! Her birthday dinner will have to happen another night.
Back to work on the stall warner assembly in the left leading edge.
The exploded view of the stall warner assembly from the plans.
I started by clecoing the VA-195F mount bracket to leading edge skin and final drilling all the rivet holes. Since the leading edge isn’t assembled yet, I’ll be able to use solid rivets to mount the stall warner rather than the blind rivets called for if doing a retrofit on a completed wing.
The VA-195F mount bracket is riveted to the inside of the leading edge. This will hold the stall warner assembly.
The VA-195F mount bracket inside the leading edge.
Once the rivet holes were drilled, I removed the mount bracket, deburred, dimpled and primed it. The Duplicolor primer I’m trying is working OK, but there are a couple things I don’t like about it. Mainly, it doesn’t seem as durable as the NAPA 7220 primer, and the Duplicolor has to set almost overnight to ensure that it is durable enough to continue working on the part. The NAPA primer, on the other hand, seems to set and be ready to work with rapidly. I also prefer the light gray color of the NAPA primer as opposed to the dark green of the Duplicolor (its the little things).
Next, I started working on the VA-195E mount plate and VA-195B keeper plate. I drilled and countersunk these parts according to the plans, then deburred and primed them.
The VA-195E mount plate and the VA-195B keeper plate both need to have some drilling, countersinking, and deburring done before they are ready.
The corners of the VA-196 stall vane also needed to be rounded a bit. This took all of 10 seconds to complete.
Once all the primer was dry, I put the stall warner assembly together. Other than the fact that there are a lot of tiny washers to handle, assembly was straight forward.
This is the stall warner microswitch. I'm not sure why, but Van's included two switches when only one is needed. I'm sure I'll find somewhere else to use the second one.
The completed stall warner assembly, viewed from the top.
The completed stall warner assembly, viewed from the side.
With the stall warner assembly put together, I moved on to the access cover plate for the leading edged. This piece only needed to be deburred and dimpled for #6 screws.
The leading edge access cover plate was simple...deburr, dimple, done.
Finally, I started to deburr the left leading edge skin. I only made it through the rivet holes on one side of the skin…the rest will have to wait. I also need to buy a good crimper. Some of the wiring for the stall warner will be completed now, and it will be my first wiring task on the plane. I only have one of those cheapo crimpers with the red handles…definitely not aircraft grade, so it looks like I’ll be making my first purchase from SteinAir soon.
