As Bob Dylan said, "the times they are achangin' "

As you can plainly see not much has been done to the Breezy. It still grabs my attention occasionally but mostly sits there wishing to be worked on. I've bought some fun airplanes over the last year that have taken my spare time. Not that the C210 wasn't fun but we mostly used it to go see Austin in Nashville and it was very utilitarian. About a year ago I bought a Helio Courier from a gentleman in California and have been playing with it. This is an amazing airplane with it's leading edge slats and huge flaps. It can fly with full control at 30 mph but still get up and cruise at a reasonable speed.

 Here we are approaching Gaston's White River Resort with a little river fog.

Runway is 3200' long and wide.

Landed in first 300' and had to taxi over 1/2 mile to the parking area.

Helio with huge flaps and leading edge slats.

Cam and I about to go do some fishin'!!

For some reason I got on this low/slow flying kick and in July we purchased a very nice 180 HP Super Cub. This cub was owned by World Aerobatic Champ Henry Haigh who I knew and from whom I received a lot of help when I built my 260 HP Laser type aerobatic monoplane. He passed away not too long ago and I purchased his Super Cub from his son..

Once again at my favorite fly in destination, Gaston's.

Cam and I leaving Gaston's

Cam and I at Gaston's.

My brother Steve and I going flying. He has somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 hours flying in Alaska in the late 80's and 90's.

So no new updates really on the Breezy. Sorry. There may be something exciting coming down the Pike but I'll wait until it gets here to divulge. It's a bucket list thing so we'll see if it all pans out.

Long overdue update

Well, I'm embarrassed that it has been so long since I last updated. I've done work to the Breezy and have finished a lot of the small tasks on the fuselage. I have also purchased a set of Piper Colt Wings which I tore down. I'll use the Ribs and hardware and purchase Super Cub length spars to remount the ribs and hardware. I've also had a few diversions. I've since set up my practice here in Jonesboro and have been extremely busy doing that. Also I purchased a Cessna 210 about a year and a half ago and that has taken some spare time from my projects.

Here we are enroute to Nashville, Tn to pick up Austin.

I've also built a CNC router with the help of Austin when he is home on break. Quite a steep learning curve but very cool to work with.

On a side note, the current owner of a Pitts I built in the '80's contacted me from England. I sold it in the early 90's and it was flown to Greenville Mississippi where it was dismantled and placed in a shipping container for the trip to England. I hadn't heard about until this gentleman contacted me and said he had purchased it and was getting it back to flight status. This was a pretty neat plane that I did a lot of modifications to. I built a set of wings with full span ailerons and with the slave struts moved to inside the I-struts (using a torque tube and bellcrank arrangement) for less drag. The ailerons themselves were all fiberglass and were a unique design at the time. They were very light and very powerful. All internal wire bracing was removed and the wing was covered with mahogany plywood. This kept a much more true airfoil shape than with a fabric covered wing. Anyway, it was a great flying little airplane. Lots more mods than what I've listed but that would take another blog! This is how it looks now...

I'll add a few pics of some of the Breezy clean up items as soon as I get a little time.

More Tailfeathers:

The horizontal is almost finished. I still need to add the bushings for the brace wires and of course attach it to the fuselage.

For the control horns I used .090 thick 4130 instead of the .063 (the plans say .065 but that is not a thickness made). The way these are made with no flanges, I just felt like I wanted a little more thickness in the pieces. The 1 ounce or so weight penalty is an acceptable trade off as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure the stock thickness is just fine, I just feel more comfortable with this. BTW, the odd looking bushing is just something I had laying around to allow me to use a bolt that was a little too long.

Propped up on the fuselage.

Tailfeathers cont:

To lay out the curve for the elevator tip I used a welding rod and curved it to what I thought looked right and then traced the line. I usually use a flexible yardstick, piece of aluminum etc. but today, the welding rod was handy so I used it.

After curving the 1/4" x .035 trailing edge tube I welded it on the side toward the center line and to the elevator spar on the outside edge. I flattened the elevator spar using my vise and a couple of pieces of heavy steel. I then touched it up with heat and a body hammer.

The plans call for the 1/4" tubing here on the counterbalance. Since mine is larger than the plans I felt I needed something a bit more substantial so I used a 7/8" x 035" tube. The extra 2 ounces of weight is ahead of the hinge line so it will only help with balance.

I notched the end with my cutoff wheel and then heated and used a hammer to form the end. You can see that the other side has not been formed yet.

I also departed slightly from the plans here as well. The elevator ribs call for the 1/4" tube to sit right on top of one another. This would entail two very long tapered cuts on the 1/4" material which would have been problematic. It's very small and would be hard to hold for sawing or grinding. What I did is simply let the tube be side by side at the trailing edge and be in line at the forward edge.

I made all the ribs on this ultra simple jig made of the usual finish nails in plywood and tacked them together. Then its a simple matter to use the bench grinder to form the ends.

Here are the ribs installed. Don't forget to use 5/16" spacers (I used bolts) to make sure the centerline of the trailing edge is in line with the centerline of the elevator spar.

I still need to add the two braces in the elevator. The 1/4" tubing really moves around a lot when you weld it and may be a tad small for the application. I've never seen this small of tubing used and I think that 3/8" might be a better choice but I would hate to add the weight behind the hinge line. Here is one half of the elevator basically complete except for the two mentioned brace tubes.

I welded the tail ribs together for a couple of inches just to make sure they are secure.

Tailfeathers Cont...

Now that the bushings are made I needed to hold them in position while I welded them. This is not easy to do by clamps etc. because the bushings need to be spaced a little from the tubes to allow for fabric and paint and still allow the elevator to pivot. On the Super Cub tail, Piper calls for 1/16" gap to be filled by weld material. These is easily accomplished by a simple jig made by drilling 3 holes in some pieces of plywood and trimming them with the bandsaw. Here is a pdf file with the layout of this simple jig: Piper Hinge Jig. I need to give proper credit, this came from Christian Sturm's excellent site  detailing his build of a scratch built Super Cub. Lots of good info there. www.supercubproject.com

Pretty simple to use...I made mine from plywood so they char a little. I tacked the bushings with heavy tacks using my MIG welder and finished with my Meco Midget Torch.

After building these hinges I found what I think would be a much better way. I don't have much experience building hinges like this i.e. Piper type with hinge pins, I've always used the Pitts style which tucks the elevator stab in much closer to the horizontal stab. Here are a couple of pics that a gentleman used for his Skybolt project. I may use this method for the vertical stab and rudder.He has some good construction pictures which are applicable to any steel tube welded fuselage at: http://www.captalrice.com/Skybolt.htm

Here I am welding up the "ribs" on the stabilizer.

So here is the elevator spar attached...next will be the rest of the elevator.

Tailfeathers:

I've decided to increase the size of the tailfeathers over the stock size. It seems to be general consensus that the tailfeathers are slightly under sized. The Breezy can also use a stock Cub or Super Cub tail yet they have substantially more surface area than the drawings. I'm not doing anything drastic just increasing the area a little. The depth of the horizontal is increased by 2  7/16" and the width is increased by 6" per side (8' total  instead of 7'). The tip end of the horizontal is increased to 10" as opposed to the stock size of 6".

Again, I use a very simple jig of a piece of plywood with some finishing nails, pretty simple stuff. The ends are mitered with my chop saw.

The end is not up tight so that's why there is a gap. I'll clamp the piece in place before I tack it.

The plans aren't clear as to what to do about the ribs in the horizontal stab. The plans show 1 rib per side but since I increased the span I figured I would go with 2 per side. The plans don't show what size tubing to use either, so I used 3/8" x .035 tubing that I happened to have on hand. This fit up took about 1 minute on the grinder.

 

Here's one side in place.

Once again I use my favorite magnetic clamps to hold things into position.

Here are the rest in place. I may put a small piece of sheet stock across these to give them a bit more rigidity although they are pretty rigid to begin with.

Time to cut bushings for the hinges. These are cut out of 1/2" bushing stock (1/4" inner diameter). I use a cut off bit on my lathe and then I don't have to face them later. You could just as easily use a hack saw and a grinder but this way is a little neater and quicker.

Hard to see here but I hold a small awl inside the tube so that it slides onto the awl when it parts instead of falling in the swarf tank or on the floor.

Here are the some of the bushings completed

I'm getting to the stage of needing to accomplish many small tasks and a few big ones. I still need to build the tail feathers, though I've been waiting in case I come across any Piper parts that are cheap. Still, I don't expect it to take very long to build them but it needs to be done. I also need to finish the gear. I'll probably wait on the wing attach until I start on the wings but I'm still on the fence about that. There are several gussets, pulley mounts and finish welds that I need to do and I'll get to those as I can.

I decided to finish up the control wheel, at least as far as I could without the actual control wheel in hand. I purchased a sprocket and hub from a local farm store. The hub is a keyed hub with a 5/8th's shaft hole. The key way is not needed and the thing is way over built for what we need but it fits well and is machined so that the sprocket can be slid on and welded to it. Here, I am drilling a 1/4" hole for the bolt. I drilled it a little undersized (C drill or .242") and then reamed it to exactly .250". Standard AN bolts are a tad under size and this is a good mix of being tight but not being hard to install. If it turns out to have too much play, I can always go to a close tolerance bolt which is a few thousandths bigger than a standard AN bolt.

Here is the sprocket welded on. I used my MIG welder for this as it is much faster and easier to use. I'm not great at MIG but it is good penetration and should hold more than the chain will. The sprocket is for a #35 chain. The #40 chain just looked way too big and it's not specified in the plans. The tensile strength is at least 1758 lbs while the #40 is 3125 lbs. The working strength is much lower but that is for large loads at fairly high , continuous rotational speed. We are essentially using them in a static type situation so one would expect to get the full tensile strength out of the chain. Also, this chain seems in line with what small Cessna's and Piper's use but to be honest, I haven't actually measured those so take that comment with a grain of salt.

The plans show the control wheel mount welded on the end of the shaft. I wanted a little bearing surface so I mounted the attaching disk on a piece of 3/4" x .058 tube and this will slip over the shaft and get a bolt through it.

Once I welded the square 1/8" thick disk to the tube I chucked it in the lathe and turned it so it would be round and concentric as well as 2" in diameter per the plans. I also faced the end to clean off the weld scale. This did cost me about .003" of material thickness but I think it'll still be plenty strong.

It's all put together, clamped in the vise and drill/reamed for a 1/4" bolt. Since I clamped it tightly before I drilled and reamed, this leaves it too tight on the bushing to turn freely. This is intended as I can now file about .001" off of one end of the bushing on the control stick and have a freely rotating but no slop connection.

Here it is installed. I still haven't decided if I'm going to add dual controls. I hate to add the weight because a lighter weight plane flies so much better. My friend Gary Angelo calls me "Maximum Mac" because I've always been somewhat obsessive about weight control while building my aerobatic airplanes. I even had one of, if not the lightest Challenger 2 long wing ultralights and that thing would get off the ground in 2 car lengths. It flew fantastic because I sweated about every ounce that went into it. Of course, it's much easier and cheaper for me to go on a diet than to obsess about a pound or two here and there but it all adds up!

The rudders are installed. The plans have you using 5/8" x .035" tube in the rudder pedal bushings and the bushings that are welded on to the fuselage. You then place a 1/2" tube as the shaft. The inside diameter of a 5/8" x .035" tube is .555" and this is way to sloppy even with some distortion from welding. I think .049" wall tubing would have been better. .058" is the size we should use, but there is significant weld scale and distortion so I think the .049" would work better. This is just for the bushings in the pedal and on the fuselage. I may need to make a slight oversized shaft/pin for mine. I'll see how sloppy it is when I get the control cables hooked up.

Overhead shot-note that I have added the gussets to the front. Of course this distorts the receiver even more and will require more clean up work.

Here is the inner landing gear mount that I built on the bench. It was a simple job to grind on it a little to get a good fit and then weld it on the fuselage. This way, I know that the holes are aligned and it is spaced properly.