Given the changes that have been made recently it is mandated that a re weigh of the aircraft is required.
Technically the replacement wing is factory so should be the same weight.. the covering is the same … but .. a full re weigh will show up any deviations.
A Priory Farm Aviator member (Tom) very kindly offered some scales that he had hired for his flex wing check
The kit, from the BMAA is beautifully put together .. the lid of each scale doubles up as a ramp .. neat and effective!
Got the aircraft setup into flying position..then roll her onto the scales and drop her gently onto the tailwheel
The resultant weight was extremely close to the original weight check and also showed that Left and Right were really.close too
With the new upper tank in place I’ve started to focus on getting things completed and ready for the inspection.
The upper tank has taken the place of the original open structure that was formed of 3 ply ribs around the cabane cross members. This then had 1mm sheet ply sandwiching a made up radio plane (relative sheet – rather like a paper backed bacon foil). The radio plane had an allow arm that gripped the foil top and bottom and the resulting black earth was connected to the foot of the Commant arial.
It sounds (and looked) a bit odd ..BUT .. worked a treat . I got a good radio signal more than half way across the Channel..not bad for a largely wood and fabric aircraft.
Now, with the new upper alloy purpose made ‘trip’ tank, I have a ready made radio plane. The tank turned out to be insulated from the aircraft (due to its rubber seating tape). This wouldn’t be good as the rest of the aircraft would provide mass radio ‘noise’ so I needed to add the earth lead.
I ended up repurposing part of the original metal arm and fittings and ran 2 earth leads ..one for the tank to a cabane mounting bolt that had ample thread to accept one small washer more. The second earth lead (and original part) will go to the new Commant ariel. The old ariel may well be OK but was bent 45′ as she up ended.
The feed from the upper tank is via a short piece of rubber fuel tubing to a ‘cut to length’ alloy tube that runs down one of the rear cabane arms and the connects to a small piece of rubber tube to the Valve selector.
I’ve got quite a ‘busy’ panel and I wanted the location of this ‘dump’ selector to be obvious and easy. I elected to move the previous side mounted mag1, 2 and push starter to the main panel.
This freed up some side coving space that allowed the chunky but purposeful fuel switch to the side.
I’ve started to run the back fuel tubing along through the side of the P2 cockpit and then lines up nicely with the feed nozzle.
I’m going to be fitting the basic fuel site gauge and so need to check if there are definitive holes to use in the new main tank.
Over the years I’ve re rigged the aircraft a number of times … usually when the wings were on and off between transportation runs between the barn where I built her and the airport. Later trips were easier as I had a trailer and the folding wings were obviously a huge help !
All turnbuckle wire locking removed and each wing with a trestle under to support the (almost) correct angle .. allows you to bring up the turnbuckle tension to achieve the desired angles
Lower wings – 3 degrees
Upper wings – 1 degree
It didn’t take too long before the numbers started aligning and the flying and landing wires started to ping quite nicely
Getting the aircraft straight and level and into ‘flying’ position first is key to ensuring correct settings
Part of the rebuild was a slight modification to the P1 panel.
Although I’ve (technically) not flown IMC in the Ranger ..a couple of unexpected cloudy descents … but flying any reasonable distance can be quite tiring.
The guages aren’t exactly big or easily visible in an open cockpit with sunlight, so I invested in a multi colour Horis. This provides all the key information in one single very clear instrument.
Unboxing and checking the detail out, it looks very simple to connect. Power, a provided GPS, splitters for the static and pressure tubes and a temperature probe.
Some of the repairs are for bits that weren’t directly caused in the accident.
The port elevator was part that got the material scraped in the hoist recovery…trying to repair the scuffed material was proving a bit tricky so decided to strip and recover. At last the ambient temperatures have risen above freezing so allowing gluing to continue.
The top of the rudder showed a small crease in the material as it tipped over, so was stripped back to check.
No damage was located so the material was terminated on the top rudder rib and the metal cleaned and prepped for a small repair panel.
It’s a bit of a pain that the diamond pattern in Olive green has now been slightly trimmed ..but may ne able to source a s.all section from the Jersey company that did the original. Remember them saying they couldn’t guarantee the rudder diamond pattern sections wouldn’t peel off at speed ! They have lasted VERY well !❤️
Not too bad ‘pre shrink’ .. will let it all cool and harden and do the other side before applying heat shrinkage to tighten
A busy weekend with home bits but managed to get up to the hangar to start the new setup and position of the radio antenna
The original was smack in the centre of the upper cabane as this was largely an open structure bound by 2 capped ply edge ribs and a centre rib. The whole thing was covered in 1mm Finnish ply and beefed up in the centre which a ply mount for the antenna.
The new upper alloy spare dump tank means that the open structure has gone but the large aero shaped tank is slightly slimmer (at the edges) and so allows space for an offset mount of the new (replaced) antenna .. the other , although probably fine, was bent through 45′ as the aircraft flipped.
I don’t really want the antenna in the body although that could be a logical location..the original, with its upper cabane location and large baco foil style landing plane gave me solid reception up to just short of the Isle of Wight from Jersey at just 2,500 – 3,000′
I’m planning on using the same foil and sandwich idea to get good connectivity
Now that I finally have collated all the parts associated with the new engine fit i can remove it for the exhaust make up.
The local company who are going to be doing this work are an amazing set of engineers who support a whole range of enthusiasts and industry covering classic cars as well as manufacturing incredible items such as Spitfire and Hurricane exhaust stacks !
The assembled parts include:
Exhaust kit (Czech supplied) with straight tubes, O ring angle rings, springs and silencer box
Lightweight oil can that fits very snugly between the rear of the engine and the firewall
The large (French sourced) water radiator – this will mount on support brackets underslung under the main body of the engine
A much smaller (than previous) oil cooler – actually found someone in UK to supply this ! And the the support arms that will place this right behind the front cowl ‘mouth’ intake
To make it easier for the engineering company to work on things (and they originally suggested perhaps taking the aircraft to them), I decided to make a cradle for the engine to mount in, and try to represent Firewall forward.
This should give them the body line as well as lots of room to work as they assemble the parts in situ and bracket up.
At some point, and now with ready access to the rear of the engine, I can look to heat up the water pump mounting bolts and feed pipes and realign 2 of the pipe exits so that the rubber coolant tubes miss the engine mount bolts.
Having bought the mice shiny new Rotax 912ULS i thought it would be a hop, skip and jump to getting her in and ground run…I was warned….
It turns out that sourcing something sime.like the water cooled radiator (something the Jabiru never had – being only Air and oil cooled) is a minefield !
Size, shape and properties are just the simple things ! Relatively .. the next main thing is actually sourcing one ..
You would think that would be easy but no … after much hunting around AND picking the brains of some French friends across the channel I have finally located a source … turns out their online system has to take your order and pre process it to calculate the (proposed) 25 Euro delivery fee… but … it doesn’t actually calculate it online. Their (intersting) way around this conundrum is to show a charge that is so off the scale .. it’s obvious that it hasn’t been calculated …
.. for the circa 300 Euro water radiator .. the delivery charge (pre estimate) ..is …not 100, not 1,000, not 10,000, not 100,000 … oh its quicker to say …
Euro 10,000,000 !!!!
Yes, I’m currently awaiting a (slight) decrease in my estimated invoice of 10,000,300 euros … I’ll let you know
The exhaust had been a similar and arduous dilemma until I located a Czech company who provided and shipped the kit relatively painlessly.
The oil radiator I’ve managed to source in the UK along with some throttle and choke cables and await these with my Horis instrument upgrade. The oil rad will not be mounted front and centre in the cowl as the fairly large radiator will make for some wide cowl cheeks .. so it’s going to be underslung at an angle .. say 30′ to the airflow but perhaps have a ram air duct to drive Air through .. the French have tried this and it seems successful on the relatively slow moving Ranger.
Once this ‘Eurovision’ of engine parts comes together it’s off to the local specialist for pipe shaping and bracket making …
Then we can start to think propellor and cowl… wonder which continent next 🤔
Having covered the first set of (4) wings nearly 7 years ago I’d forgotten how fiddly it can be 😊
Its a mix of frustration and sheer delight as the heat gun tightens everything to perfection
All the little bits in between are the challenging bits …
Making sure all ‘hard’ edges are chamfered down
Making sure you mark the templates for both Top and Bottom covering before sealing one side down
Checking that you have pre glued the wood surfaces as dried off surfaces don’t look like they have been prepped
Getting sufficient pegs or tape to hold wings down whilst you pre mark the glue areas
Getting the overlaps right.. in terms of size (top always goes OVER the bottom)
One key thing to remind myself .. once you have trimmed and pre glued and let it go off and get to the exciting stage of fit .. don’t charge ahead and try to tackle and shrink straight away
The shrink rate is about 25% and can easily pull the tag points away if they haven’t been allowed to cool
Jersey Sherwood Ranger 