[79FT]: Building Things

In [Skybolt] Wings:

Rack-o-Ribs

lotsa hours


On: Nov 23, 2014
In: [Skybolt] Wings
Tags: CAD, lower wings, ailerons, ribs

No posts about the Skybolt doesn't mean that there was nothing done :). Yessir!

I was redrawing pretty much everything I did in the first few months of modeling the lower wing; and that ate up a bunch of time and didn't actually produce anything to show. But damn, did it suck up time!

I ended up re-doing:

  • Spars
  • All ribs
  • Full wing assembly (now it's clean and easy to tweak)
  • A lot of compression plates
  • Complete aileron assembly

Especially with ribs, the problem was that I did them while learning SolidWorks -- which led me to sketching them in AutoCad first (I used to hate doing curves in SWX.. now I hate Autocad, but that's another story :)). That made them virtually un-tweakable; and "tweaking" the verticals, which I had to do after confirming drag wire interference, proved to be virtually impossible.

So, I decided to clean it all up. Oh yeah, and I have moved that interfering vertical.

The brand-spanking new set of ribs:

Master sketch, off of which everything else was derived

Master sketch, off of which everything else was derived

Butt Wing Rib

Butt Wing Rib

Typical Wing Rib

Typical Wing Rib

One of the many sketches that go into a rib

One of the many sketches that go into a rib

Aileron rib

Aileron rib

Rrriiibbzzz!! Oh, wait...

Rrriiibbzzz!! Oh, wait...

And then, only then, I could go on to finishing the tip rib and the aileron tip rib.

For tip rib, I used the positioned tip bow to project the cuts onto the surface of the nose block. I'll explain this technique in a bit with aileron as illustration.

Tip rib, with all the cuts that will match the bow perfectly

Tip rib, with all the cuts that will match the bow perfectly

Tip, and other ribs, on the spars, and tip bow

Tip, and other ribs, on the spars, and tip bow

And then there's the aileron, it's bow, and tip rib.

I started with a "placeholder" that was the inboard (full size) butt rib. Then, using the tip bow, I drew a couple of "guide curves" and projected it on a couple planes, corresponding to ribs, giving me two different profiles.

Projections, and helpers

Projections, and helpers

Guide curve and loft profile

Guide curve and loft profile

Then, I set up my loft, and voila!

After that, I drew the butt rib. In the previous post, I said that it is supposed to be a touch larger profile than the tip wing rib; but that ended up not being the case -- in fact, it's a touch smaller and somewhat "hides" in the aileron well area. I decided not to mess with that...

Tip rib sketch, derived from the

Tip rib sketch, derived from the "regular" rib, and the tip bow "intersecting" with it

Aileron tip rib model

Aileron tip rib model

And here it is, in all it's glory, with the bow, tip rib, with everything matching perfectly. Note how the tip bow of the aileron changes shape along it's length -- that will be a hard one to hand-shape when making it...

Aileron on the wing

Aileron on the wing


There are some flight instructors where the student is important, and there are some instructors where the instructor is important. Pick carefully.


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In [Skybolt] Wings:

Drag Wires, Aileron, et al

completing and refining


On: Sep 01, 2014
In: [Skybolt] Wings
Tags: CAD, lower wings, ailerons

Another week and a half. Did a ton of little things; each one of which took a ton of time, with seemingly little result... I guess, devil's in the details.

It's constant tweaking and tuning of things that takes a bunch of time. But, at this point, most of the rough things are in, and it's that tweaking and tuning that's left to do...

Oh well.

Drag Wires: done.

Finished all the drag wires. Initially I did an incorrect layout from the standpoint of which wire passes over which (or under which, depends on how you look at it). Apparently, I came across a definition of drag/anti-drag that's exactly the opposite of how the plans define them... Sigh.

Wires have to cross inside the drag wire blocks and inside the spar; so one has to go over and one under, like this (lots of transparency here):

Drag/Anti Drag Wires Crossing

Drag/Anti Drag Wires Crossing

That's the pattern I did wrong; causing some interference with the bellcrank and heavy interference with rib diagonals.

Thanks to my original post on drag wire blocks interference in the aileron bay, and the picture Ward posted in that thread, I figured the wires pattern out. Switching it around made for much better clearance!

Also, my original problem with aileron interfering with the drag wire blocks is apparently no problem at all - I'll just relieve them (rasp, file, sandpaper, whatever) to provide clearance.

So, here's what the wing looks like right now:

Latest wing with all the drag wires

Latest wing with all the drag wires

Aileron Bay and Drag Wires

... and then, something I spent quite a number of hours on. You see, I want to sheet the inside of the aileron bay with curved piece of 1/16th plywood, supported on braces joining ends of the ribs together.

A few pictures below show the idea:

Aileron Bay Sheeting. Grain orientation is off, I know :)

Aileron Bay Sheeting. Grain orientation is off, I know :)

This shows the support brace between ribs, just one for now.

Aileron Bay Sheeting, showing the support brace.

Aileron Bay Sheeting, showing the support brace.

This is all very rough. The problem though was this.

Here's how it looks from the wing tip side:

Aileron Well, looking from the tip, zoomed out

Aileron Well, looking from the tip, zoomed out

Aileron Well, zoomed in.

Aileron Well, zoomed in.

See that clearance??? 7/64ths between the aileron tip and the nut! So even before I started figuring out the best spline curve for that sheeting, it was obvious that it won't clear... 1/16th ply + 1/16th gap is already a 1/8th, or 8/64ths!

Asked the Biplane Forum folk in the same thread... And, separately, actually figured it out - it was suggested to use two thin jam nuts there instead of a thin + regular nyloc.

That cleared a lot of space up!

Finally, some clearance!

Finally, some clearance!

I was thinking about modifying the tails of the wing ribs in the bay area to support this sheeting.. But, even with thin jam nuts, the bay is still very tight. Given that I won't be able to build exactly to perfect dimensions, I finally decided not to bother, and just build in place (and then we'll see what clearance I really will be able to get :)

Backup plan? Have some drag wire hardware protrude into the bay, and sheeting be not "in front of it", but somewhat behind it (closer to the main wing spar). Something like this.

And with that, I moved on to

Cleaning a lot of things up

Added all the hardware to the aileron hinges. Cleaned up most of the compression plates (doublers) to go around the compression struts and drag wires.

Oh, and apparently, my aileron hinges were drawn a bit wrong (and had that unsightly early model of Fafnir rod end I have thrown together). Fixed that. Made them pretty green color to celebrate the occasion :).

All pretty and correct hinges with HW

All pretty and correct hinges with HW

Compression plates relieved for the struts and drag wires

Compression plates relieved for the struts and drag wires

Interference

As I expected. Drag wires don't clear rib's diagonals in some places.

Station 24 vertical and diagonal interference.

Station 24 vertical and diagonal interference.

Hale Wallace in his notes suggested to relocate station 24 vertical to 23 3/4, 1/4 inch forward (or "left" in the above picture). This will make the diagonal more steep, and clear the drag wires. I'll have to do that.

Another nasty. I was ready for this, and, sure enough, the bellcrank/idler pushrod doesn't clear the compression struts. The idler will have to be made lower; Steen bends them downward and I will see if I can avoid that by just moving it down a bit (and moving the idler arm down on it's bushing).

Pushrod not clearing compression struts.

Pushrod not clearing compression struts.

Ribs

So, I started looking at relocating that vertical first.

My ribs' models are the first ones I did in Solid Works; and they suck. They are made off of sketches created from converted AutoCAD files, with lots of ugly things in them. They are practically unmodifiable. Back then I thought it was easier to draw things in AutoCAD and import them to SWX - oh, what an idiot I was :).

Also, while looking at things, it became clear that they also are not sitting right on spars (not symmetrical to spars' center plane basically).

It feels like I will end up re-drawing them from scratch, and doing them as proper assemblies this time. We'll see.

It might well be that the problem I was having with aileron-to-other-ribs-alignment will go away, and no holes will need to be relocated...

It's annoying, but at this time I am so much better with SWX than back a year ago when I was doing ribs. Still, Le Sigh.

Aileron Tip Rib, Wing Tip Rib, and Tip Bow

I've been putting this off, since those tip ribs are not dimensioned on the plans, and aren't a standard airfoil. They're supposed to create a nice transition from the main wing panel into the tip bow, creating some nice curvature.

I had the wing tip rib drawn up approximately, just as a placeholder.

Yesterday, I did an approximate aileron tip rib as well. Cutting it out of the plan and super-imposing two patters on one another helped! Plans are off (dimensions marked on them are not matching the dimensions measured off of them), but at least they're off uniformly within one sheet; allowing me to do this. It shows what's where.

Tip Rib, cut out - finally, some physical work on the

Tip Rib, cut out - finally, some physical work on the "plane"!

Well, for one, it became obvious that the top aileron skin on the leading edge will have to create a compound curve going to the tip rib.

Searching thru the Forum, and reading things showed that apparently it's not that big of a problem. Gradual gluing and lots of clamping pressure should solve that one. :)

And then, there's the overall tip rib shape.

Overall setup.

Overall setup.

This is all very early with no "trimming cuts" made, obviously.

If you think about it, the aileron tip rib is supposed to be a bit "beefier" ("taller") than the wing tip rib. The tail of the aileron tip rib in the place where it's touching the bow should be 3/4 inches tall (so that it's flush with the bow).

All that will create nice smooth "flow" of curves from the last "full size" airfoil section (created by the wing rib and the aileron rib) into the tip ribs and tip bow.

So, first thing I'm not sure about is how good my tip rib (wing rib that is) is. I think the aileron tip rib should "play off" the wing tip rib's shape... In fact, if you lay a straightedge between the tip rib and the aileron rib with aileron positioned at 0 degree deflection, moving that straightedge should define the form of the aileron tip rib. I will do just that, later, lofting the surface that will "cut" the aileron tip rib out (and use a real straightedge with some sandpaper glued to it to shape the actual aileron's tip rib). I love it how CADing makes you think about these things!

But! That requires me to have a nice wing tip rib. Which I don't have. So to that task then, first.

Skybolt plans have the general outline and no grid on them. It's not a standard airfoil. Hmmm...

Last time I did it, I took dimensions off of plans. It turned out a bit off shape-wise if compared visually to the plans, so I tweaked it a bit. I still don't like that tip rib.

To the Firebolt!

Firebolt, by the way, is Skybolt, "improved" (and by that I mean added weight). Fuselage is a few inches longer, and hardware is all different; but basic wing design and overall things are the same. It makes it a great reference to read thru and see how things are done there.

Firebolt's wing tip rib is located at the same station as Skybolt's. That gives me some hope :).

Firebolt plans are also off (print dimensions not matching actual on sheets), but at least they have the grid -- amount of error accumulated over 1 inch of measurment hopefully is negligible. We'll have to see.

Dimensioning the Firebolt plans

Dimensioning the Firebolt plans

And after going thru about half of that dimensioning, I decided that it's actually time to write this B-Log post, and take a break :).

I'll be bending some more sheet metal tomorrow. Post on that coming up!


Every one already knows the definition of a 'good' landing is one from which you can walk away. But very few know the definition of a 'great landing.' It's one after which you can use the airplane another time.


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In [Skybolt] Wings:

Drag and Anti Drag Wires

the beginnings


On: Aug 21, 2014
In: [Skybolt] Wings
Tags: CAD, lower wings

Past few CAD sessions were drag wires and compression struts...

Typical wire blocks look like this:

Drag / Anti-Drag Wire Block

Drag / Anti-Drag Wire Block

One interesting thing is that those interfere with aileron's leading edge in the aileron bay if left as is...

Block interference in the aileron bay

Block interference in the aileron bay

Again, asked guys on the Forum. Looks like just relieving them should work.

It's also clear that they interfere with the control system. Well, Ill have to adjust that when I finish the wires' models.

Meanwhile, added all the compression struts and working on the drag / anti-drag wire alignment and layout (they have to cross in the middle of wing bays, so I have to figure out what goes on top and what goes on the bottom). HFW did a good starting layout in his addendum to Plans, so going off of that for now.

Not much more to tell, so Ill just post two more pictures :).

Drag / Anti-Drag Wires hardware

Drag / Anti-Drag Wires hardware

Drag / Anti-Drag Wires in the first wing bay. Second bay is being modeled

Drag / Anti-Drag Wires in the first wing bay. Second bay is being modeled


Fuel in the tanks is limited. Gravity is forever.


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In [Skybolt] Wings:

Wings and Control System

done..! Well, almost


On: Aug 12, 2014
In: [Skybolt] Wings
Tags: CAD, lower wings, ailerons, control system, fittings, fuselage

Ahh.. Finally. One week for a business trip, nothing done. One week and three days for Oshkosh. Nothing done (or rather, other stuff done :) ). And many more hours of fighting Solid Works; I finally have something to log! :)

Incidence and Fittings: Finishing Up

First, the incidence. Last time, I was trying to figure out how to deal with vertical fittings having to align with spars angled at 1.5 degrees up (incidence). A good discussion on the Forum ensued, and I figured (aside from me having to buy a +/- .0001 Precision Axe), to drill the hole at 1.5 degree angle in the front fitting, and forget about the little gap that shows up there, and weld the rear fitting in place. So something like this (you're looking at the fitting pair from the side, the CL is the hole centerline).

A pair of fittings, with the hole drilled at an angle

A pair of fittings, with the hole drilled at an angle

Gap that shows up when fittings are vertical, and hole is at an angle.

Gap that shows up when fittings are vertical, and hole is at an angle.

Note to self: When building / finish welding, I might reconsider and bend the tops of that fitting 1.5 degrees back to make everything flush. I probably will.

Back to the Control System

Next item on the list was bellcrank-to-aileron pushrod, which is tricky. See, if it's straight, it doesn't clear all the hardware.

Pushrod is not clearing hardware if straight

Pushrod is not clearing hardware if straight

So it had to be slightly bent to make the bellcrank side rod-end a bit more "horizontal", if you will, while not "horizontal" enough to hit the spar above.

This sounds easy; and probably is -- but tweaking splines, checking, re-checking and tweaking again while checking for full range of aileron's motion took up most of the time here.. I think I spent a good 10 hours or so just tweaking that one pushrod... And finally, here it is -- notice a slight bend in it. Just a touch less bend and it hits the washer under the bellcrank side rod end, just a touch more, and it gets dangerously close to the spar.

Aileron pushrod, tweaked to fit

Aileron pushrod, tweaked to fit

Finally, I was able to move the aileron linkage on the wing model and check the idler - bellcrank pushrod for ribs' verticals clearance. It clears! There's another clearance issue though - by the looks of it, it won't clear the compression struts (3/4 x 3/4 inch struts go in the middle of the ribs, forming wing bays along with drag/anti-drag wires) by the looks of it. So struts and wires it is, next, amongst other things..

Control system looking from the wing butt: won't clear the compression struts

Control system looking from the wing butt: won't clear the compression struts

Fitting Wings To the Fuse

For some reason, Solid Works gods decided to start hating me here. Remember the note about angled hole in the front wing fittings pair? Assuming that pair is mated to the fuse (lower longeron); front spar butt hole (ha.. ha ha.. haha..) mated to that angled hole in the fittings' pair should produce correct incidence; and dihedral can be set with wing spar centerline mated to, say, one of the fuselage's crossmember's centerlines, at required 1 degree angle? Ha! Yes; that worked -- but for some reason, would cause all kinds of shenanigans the moment I would make the SWX assembly flexible (== allowing me to move control surfaces of the wing sub-assembly as a part of the overall assembly).

Yeah-right. -3 hours of my life until I gave up.

Instead, I made a virtual "jig" -- another sub-assembly containing planes at correct dihedral and incidence angles. Wing's "Top" plane would mate to the "wing" plane of the "jig"; latter ("wing" plane) would be at 1.5 degree incidence / 1 degree dihedral. That worked.

The virtual

The virtual "jig" made of planes.

Dihedral of  the lower right wing

Dihedral of the lower right wing

That same "jig" assembly contains fittings mated to the wing spar -- and then, that "jig" subassembly is mated to the fuse via fittings - to - longerons mates.

That, for whatever reason, worked. After that, 10 more minutes of making one final pushrod connecting idler to Actuator Arm on the Torque Tube, and..

Control system all hooked up and working!

Control system all hooked up and working!

Happy me, making virtual airplane noises moving virtual torque tube moving virtual control system actuating virtual ailerons... Who says CAD isn't fun? :)

Now, back to those compression struts, only to find out that the pushrod does NOT clear... Le sigh.


"Air Force Four-Five, it appears your engine has...oh, disregard...I see you've already ejected."
-ORD ATC


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In [Skybolt] Wings:

Pushrods, bearings, and clearance

slowly getting there


On: Jun 09, 2014
In: [Skybolt] Wings
Tags: CAD, lower wings, control system, ailerons

In the past couple of evenings; have continued hanging virtual control system on the virtual wings.

Thanks to CWilliamRose from Biplane Forum, I now have quite a bit of models of AN / MILSPEC bearings.. REP3H5 included, but he didn't have REP4H6, so that had to be done first..

REP4H6 bearing model

REP4H6 bearing model

Couldn't find a few dimensions; but my rationale is as long as the basic eye height / bore / shank are there, and the ball 'rotates', that's good enough for the purpose of my alignment checking, for now at least. Ill revisit if I start getting into tight corners.

Next, hung the Idler, bearings, cleaned up the model (funny, lower wing assembly is technically my first serious SolidWorks model, so I keep cleaning it up as I go, killing stupid things I did back when I didn't know any better).

Sigh... I will need to hang the wing onto the fuselage model to make sure the pushrod doesn't hit verticals -- clearance is there, but might not be enough.

Here's the wing model with the pushrod:

Idler, bellcrank, and pushrod -- there is clearance, but is it enough?

Idler, bellcrank, and pushrod -- there is clearance, but is it enough?

Here, it's looking at the rod from the tip,  the rod is  that white thingie right of the rib verticals

Here, it's looking at the rod from the tip, the rod is that white thingie right of the rib verticals

So, I guess, to the wing fittings and control stick assembled with fuse models tomorrow.

And to finish today off, here's the full zoomed out picture of the lower wing, as it is right now.

The wing

The wing


Sorry folks for the hard landing. It wasn't the pilot's fault, and it wasn't the plane's fault. It was the asphalt.


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In [Skybolt] Wings:

Bellcrank and Idler

Bending and twisting virtual metal


On: May 22, 2014
In: [Skybolt] Wings
Tags: CAD, lower wings, control system, ailerons

It's almost 5 am and Im finally done with the bellcrank alignment! Phew.

By the way, sheet metal stuff in Solid Works is amazing! You give it the bend lines, radii, and a couple more parameters; and it automatically creates both the bent item; as well as the flat pattern. Print the pattern, glue, and start bending -- it will show you which line, how many degrees, and in which direction to bend. Ill post one of those final drawings later, when I get around to printing them and bending some actual metal :).

Anyway...

The night started quite jolly with me whipping out the idler arm with it's bracket. Looks pretty neat, eh?

Aileron Idler Arm and Bracket

Aileron Idler Arm and Bracket

And then, back to the bellcrank hell. I had it modeled back in the days, and the "jog" bend 1/2 inches down made. Here's how busy the sketch with all the radii and holes looks BTW; pre-bending.

Bellcrank layout

Bellcrank layout

Anyway, with all the sheet metal awesomeness SolidWorks doesn't know how to twist. You can twist a model by using deformation, but at that point all kinds of shenanigans begin to happen. For example, all faces of the model stop being planar faces (meaning nothing can be sketched on them, and sketch is how you start defining a feature (part of the model)); for some reason I wasn't able to put a reference point into the center of one of the holes, etc. (I ended up drawing that point finally by projecting that hole's centerline onto one of the faces; that did work for whatever the weird reason Solid Works gods must have).

Bellcrank, bent and twisted

Bellcrank, bent and twisted

And after fiddling with it for about an hour, I was finally able to position everything. The plans don't specify where the bracket should be, so my educated and logical (yes, mr. Spock?) guess was that it should be so that the aileron pushrod connecting bellcrank to the alieron hinge is aligned and straight in the "aileron neutral" position. So I used the aileron hinge center as the reference; squared the bellcrank and aligned it that way. Note the blue line (that's actually a plane bisecting the aileron hinge), and the Point1 (that's that wretched point on the twisted surface that took me so long to figure out). That's what I used for alignment.

Bellcrank mated and aligned with aileron hinge

Bellcrank mated and aligned with aileron hinge

Coming up, putting in the idler, all the pushrods, and checking clearances with rib truss throughout the full range of motion. I strongly suspect that I will need the control stick's model on the fuse to do that, since that's what the other end of that pushrod attaches to. Oh man... gotta love those dependencies. That just means that I will have to do that model earlier than planned. Oh well. I like Solid Works anyways...

Tomorrow's the Shop Day! Gotta clean and put that compressor together.

OK 5:11 AM; time to go get some sleep :)


Flying at night is the same as flying in the day, except you can't see.


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In [Skybolt] Wings:

Aileron-To-Rib - Alignment

Fixed mis-alignment in ailerons


On: May 21, 2014
In: [Skybolt] Wings
Tags: CAD, lower wings, ailerons

Today, got only about an hour and a half for CADing. Re-opened my Lower Wing model, 50% thru or so, and started remembering things and checking things around.

I was right at a point when I hung the ailerons on the wings, and this time was re-checking the alignment again, only to find that they were off! Looked like they were lower than the rest of the wing ribs, by about 1/16th. Clearly visible on the screenshot below.

Black lines are aileron outline, orange lines are wing ribs

Black lines are aileron outline, orange lines are wing ribs

Started digging around and re-checking the hinges, holes, etc, with plans. The 'spar' side hinges are the most complex ones, and they were fine.. When checking the aileron assembly though, noticed this, which struck me as odd (and a bit illogical):

Aileron hinge sticking a bit 'above' the spar

Aileron hinge sticking a bit 'above' the spar

Notice it sticking up? 3/32nds! Close to 1/16th. Arguably, there will be the filler there, but it still seems illogical (yes, mr Spock? :) ).

Anyways, moving the spar attach holes on the hinge up by 1/16ths (plans call for 3/8ths between the top of the hinge and the top hole center), so 5/16ths it is. That moved the whole aileron up on the hinge, and therefore, relative to the wing, and voila - a perfect match!

Match!

Match!

Yay! A perfect match.

Now, I know that in reality I will be drilling holes in spars in place based on the pilots in the hinges (or the other way around, hinges based on holes in spars (damn.. Im yet to decide.. :) ); but I'd rather start 'clean'.


Any pilot who relies on a terminal forecast can be sold the Brooklyn (or London) Bridge. If he relies on winds-aloft reports he can be sold Niagara Falls (or The Tower of London).



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