Chapter Log

Step 0 - Materials
Status: Completed 
Est Time: 0.00, Actual: 0.00
Est Cost: $ 1453.30, Actual: $ 3121.67
Date Completed: 10/14/2005

If you order your parts from Brock, DO NOT LOOK AT THEIR WEB SITE. It's wrong. I estimated $800 for their parts, plus some miscellaneous items elsewhere. Wrong. My total came to $3,121.67, including shipping. I was told they simply never update their Web site, and I was supposed to have ordered from their paper catalog. Oh well, I'm in no mood for a fight right now, and I needed the parts anyway.

Step 1 - Main Gear Bulkhead Reinforcements
Status: Completed 
Est Time: 5.00, Actual: 5.00
Est Cost: $ 0.00, Actual: $ 0.00
Date Completed: 02/21/2009

Not much to comment on here. This is a pretty straightforward step.

Step 2 - Preparing Strut
Status: Completed 
Est Time: 12.00, Actual: 25.00
Est Cost: $ 0.00, Actual: $ 0.00
Date Completed: 02/21/2009

It took about five days to do this step, over the course of two months. I decided to go with Wayne Lanza's method of reducing the main gear drag -- we'll see if that pays off.

The gear wraps went as planned, then I installed the brake line tubing. I used tubing large enough that I can slip my brake line down, then covered the trailing edge with foam blocks. Following Wayne's method, I set the gear to the correct angle on my work table, sanded the foam blocks until they were vertical, found the centerline for the new trailing edge, then cut and shaped the blocks into the new airfoil shape. It looks more or less like I expected it to...

I then did the trailing-edge layups down onto the face of the gear strut. Those are visible in the first two pictures below. After trimming and sanding the new trailing edges (I made a cardboard template so I could get them as close to identical as possible on each side), I then did the leading-edge layups today. It took a bit longer than I expected (I initially thought it was two UNI, not four) but wasn't exactly hard. The results are in the second two pictures below.

The plans normally call for the strut to be up on nail heads at this point. I had trouble getting it to stay on there while doing the layup, so I yanked them out and threw foam blocks underneath. I did tuck the layups around the bottom of the strut where the foam blocks are, so the wraps are complete. It was just easier this way.

Honestly, all this work to make these fairings seems a little pointless because the rotary engine can basically bludgeon you throw the air even if you DO have extra drag, but perhaps it'll be worth it in a slight fuel consumption savings.

Step 3 - Attach Tabs and Installation
Status: Completed 
Est Time: 12.00, Actual: 38.50
Est Cost: $ 0.00, Actual: $ 0.00
Date Completed: 05/25/2009

02/22/2009 (6 hours):
I didn't get as far as I'd hoped today, but I did make good progress. I got a late start because I stopped by the hardware store to pick up some things I figured I needed, then discovered I already had. Oh well.

My layup of the final UNI wraps was still not completely cured, but it was good enough to start working on, and hopefully the 6 hours at 70+ degrees today, plus the leftover heat in the hangar, will finish the job tonight. It was slightly tacky as I cut the excess off, so I didn't do a full trim - just got it pretty close with the Fein, and I'll finish it off later.

I got a workbench set up with a sheet of plywood against it, and leveled out. The hangar floor was actually remarkably close to level, at least in that spot, which saved some time. I had to trim the built-up trailing edges because I made them slightly over-sized, but heck, that's why I made them slightly oversized. I discovered two miscalculations here:

1. My built-up trailing edge shapes are not identical. One is slightly thinner than the other. I presume this is because this section is shaped by hand/eye - they ARE the same length. I think I just have a low area where I over-sanded one, and I'll have to add a bit of micro here when finishing. Not the end of the world.
2. Second, one brake line tube doesn't run all the way up to the end where I trimmed it. I'll have to drill around in there a bit (I think it's about 1/4" in) to find it. Also no big deal.

Trimming the gear leg was easier than I expected, given all that others make of this. I used a fresh hacksaw blade on each leg, which definitely helped, but it went along fine. I then set the leg against the plywood, did all the marking and measurements called for, and built up the support box.

This all took about 6 hours, and I was planning on making a full day/evening of it and doing the attach tab layups, but I had to stop for the day. When I set up my only spare worktable I discovered it was bowing in the middle, clearly not strong/stiff enough to support the gear. (It's not the main bench - that's in use right now.) I'll get a solid-core door from the Borg next trip out and pick up where I left off.

03/05/2009 (6.5 hours):
I found a table I wasn't using in the corner of the shop, cleaned it up a bit, and pressed it into service. It took a lot of fiddling to get everything leveled properly and I was still off about 1/16" where the trailing edges were supposed to fall on the same line. I finally figured out that I had a bit more material at that point left over from the trimming. Phew!

Laying up the attach tabs was actually a pretty straightforward step - time-consuming, but not hard. I followed the plans pretty much verbatim, except I used duct tape to seal off the box because box sealing tape is just not sticky enough (on wood). Other than that, it was a long layup but not particularly hard. Others have had to squeeze the heck out of their tabs with clamps to make sure they aren't too wide - I didn't have to. According to the plans M drawings (and some math) they can be up to 7" wide. Mine were 6.75" wide, so I just applied light pressure to produce a very flat surface. Hopefully this will be correct in the end!

03/08/2009 (8 hours):
I've learned something over the years as I've worked on the Cozy. A "step" really has no meaning in terms of time. There's no average length of time that one takes, nor is it even a good marker of logically separate tasks. Some steps take an hour, some steps take 6 days. Sometimes one paragraph can mean a huge amount of work, while other times four paragraphs is just a small job.

This is a big one.

Today I got an early start, and it was a good thing I did because the next "piece" of this step took all day. I drilled the attach tab holes per plans, and with very minimal tweaking was able to get the drill bit to sit smoothly in the holes with no play. I then removed the box from the gear leg, and spent well over an hour chipping and chiseling bondo and bits of wood out of the attach tab areas.

Once I got all that cleaned up, I prepped the area for layup, did the flox corners, and installed the UNI and BID plies on the inner surfaces. That went a lot faster because John wet out the BID while I installed the UNI. It's a good thing, too. We had our first warm day in a long time, and the pump still has all Fast hardener in it. My UNI was setting up as I was installing the last few plies of it! I had to really hustle to get it all in there nicely, but I did and it worked out fine.

03/25/2009 (5 hours):
This is the step that never ends!

Today I didn't get MUCH done but it was important stuff. I got the tabs completely cut out and cleaned off, trimmed off the waste, and re-drilled the holes. I was able to install 1/4" drill bits with very minor tweaking, just a light tap with a file, so I'm pleased with that.

Word of advice: if you get to this step and you're very confident in your layup abilities, find some way to trim the excess tab width before it cures! At the very least, go for more like a 3.25" width rather than 3.8" as the plans call for. It would have been a lot less trimming, and less danger of damaging the leg underneath. Or maybe just leave the excess - it's several ounces of junk you don't need, but this isn't the worst spot to have a bit of excess.

One thing that did NOT go well is the holes are too low! In one photo you can see a spot where the hole is kissing the attach tab. The damage there is nothing - my tab goes farther onto the strut than it should, and this extra bump is what I gouged. But when I drill the holes out to their final size it will cause a problem. I looked through other builder logs and found that others have had this exact issue. I plan to do what they did - move the holes up slightly, then correct for it at the wheels later. No big deal. I don't even need to fill the current holes, because the new ones will be just a bit higher, and when drilled out to their final size, will overlap the current holes.

I took a moment and positioned the gear in the fuselage. It looked great! As the plans suggest, I'll have to do a bit of light tweaking with a file on my bulkhead holes, but I don't want to do that until I can get the bird upside down and position everything properly. Until then, I'm setting this piece aside and moving on to other items.

04-18-2009 (2 hours):
Today we flipped the plane over so I can install the mains. Flipping a Cozy is a big job best suited to 4-5 guys. I have round wooden supports to help with the job, but it's still very heavy and unwieldy (mine especially, because I have my strakes and turtleback on now!) To do the job with fewer people, we slung a rope and pulley up to the ceiling and tied it to the nose. I hauled on that while John lifted the actual Cozy and together we actually managed the job pretty easily - more easily than we had expected. Moving the sucker AROUND once we FLIPPED it was tricky, but we got the job done with a dolly under the nose and each us lifting one strake.

Installing the gear itself is a little tricky because I can't drop plumb lines to the floor the way the plans specify. I was pretty tired by this point, so I bagged on it for the day. Tomorrow I'll be back out, and the plan is to set up string lines and data points on the strake skin. That should give me what I need.

04-19-2009 (8 hours):
Today was a very frustrating day. I seemed to encounter setback after setback - drill bits breaking, my right angle DRILL breaking, my screws weren't long enough, etc. I felt like for every 10 minutes I actually spent working on the plane, I spent 30-40 trying to fix a tool or resolve an unproductive issue.

I did, however, more or less bludgeon my way through this step, and it's almost done. I started by redrilling the holes in the attach tabs, then installing the gear in the fuselage on 1/4" drill bit "studs". After a bit of finagling to get the holes perfect, I was very pleased with the results. My gear LE sits perfectly above FS 108.25. I'm at most 1/16" out without any adjustment required, and that was rewarding for a first attempt.

I took out the gear and installed the aluminum hardpoints. I hit a bit of trouble here. It's very difficult to work in my fuselage since it's mostly complete, and my Bondo didn't cure well so the attach tabs were floating all around. It took a lot of careful effort to chisel all the bad stuff back out of the hell hole, but I did it, slowly and carefully. Then I drilled the countersunk screw holes, only to find that my right-angle drill bit broke its weld! This product isn't exactly very high quality.

OK, off to the Borg. I got a new right-angle drill adapter, but this was much larger - 5" in overall depth. With a normal drill bit in it, it was too long to fit in the gear well! OK, be innovative - this is what Dremels are for, right? I cut off about an inch of the bit, and was off and running again. Unfortunately, about 5 holes away from being done, I broke my bit, and it was my only one of this size! Grrrrrrrrrrrrr! Well, I do only have five holes left to drill... And I do have this bench grinder... No problem, I ground a new end onto the bit. I'm not that good at this, and I sort of free-handed it by grinding a bit, comparing it to a "real" drill bit, and grinding a bit more. I'm no machinist, but it did cut the last five holes, so it worked OK.

I'm now more than a little frustrated, but not as much as I'm about to become! The next step is to flox the hardpoints onto the bulkheads. Fine, easy job. I'm even loaded with all Fast hardener, so maybe I can keep going later today. I sanded the bulkheads, mixed up some flox, buttered up my hardpoints, and put them in place, using the drill bits again for alignment. Now I ran into TWO more snags. First, my bulkheads (remember, these are built in Chapter 4, when you don't know what you're doing) weren't PERFECTLY flat. I mean, they were MOSTLY flat, but after all the layups/reinforcements they sat at a few thousandths of an angle. That's annoying because when you screw the hardpoints down it puts a LOT of tension on the drill bits used for alignment, and makes it very difficult to remove them! I got around that using pliers and hammers, but at the cost of getting my drill bits covered with flox, and setting up for a later frustration.

My second issue was my screws - the ones the plans call for weren't long enough! After all this time, I'm so used to working with AN bolts that I have a good supply of extras in a wide variety of lengths. It hadn't occurred to me to get that many countersunk screws - the plans really don't use them that much. So I had no way to finish this step! Well, sort of - for now, I just installed regular AN bolts so I could at least get the hardpoints in. I've ordered more screws, and hopefully the lengths I need will be here by Thursday, which is my next build day. (And hopefully I'll be able to get the AN bolts back out!)

Off to the next step. Drilling! I'd been sort of afraid of this particular step for a while, and that's why I had been holding off for so long. Well, it wasn't that bad. I had two each of Milwaukee bi-metal hole saws in 0.75" and 0.625" sizes, with arbors designed to sit with a set screw on a 1/4" arbor. Perfect. I ran the long 12" bits through my landing gear, set up the hole saws, and went at it. I was careful to drill only most of the way through each section, to keep the holes aligned and supported, and moreover since I had two of each hole saw, I was able to adjust them as I went so each acted as a drilling bushing as its hole was made. I was pretty happy with the holes in my landing gear. A little light filing to clean up the holes, and my bushing/tubes went in with a few light taps from a hammer. Perfect.

Then the trouble started. I proceeded to set up for the fuselage drilling, and was pleased with my initial results - the bimetal hole saws made clean work of the aluminum hard points, which I had been nervous about. But it took a LONG time. Friction in the system was high, so I kept having to back out the whole assembly and clear chips and metal/fiberglass rings out of the hole saws. I did use some cutting lube while drilling the hardpoints - I don't know that it helped. It seemed to hold the chips in the drilling area, and that wasn't helpful at all. To make matters worse, I had a SLIGHT bit of flox on the drill bit, and the heat of drilling was curing it hyper-fast. At one point it took me nearly 45 minutes to get the whole assembly out, using pry bars, screwdrivers, and hammers, because the hole saw arbors had gotten floxed into place on the 1/4" drill bit, the hole saws had filled up with chips AND cured in there too, and the whole assembly was locked in place!

But I did get the job done. Finally, at the end of the day, I went to install the gear. My assembly is a VERY tight fit. I think it will go, but I didn't want to force it. I think I need to sand the faces of the steel bushings very slightly - I need a few more thousandths of clearance before the gear will pop in without flexing the bulkheads. And the AN bolt heads are in the way, so I need to install the countersunk screws. But despite all the issues, I'm relatively pleased - I think this whole mess turned out OK in the end!

04-22-2009 (3 hours):
Today my job was to get the bushings installed. My problem is that my bulkheads are either too close together, or my MKMGA spacers are too long. It's not a huge offset, but it's enough to make getting the gear to sit in the gear well almost impossible. So I started by milling the faces of the bushings - not a lot, just a few thousandths of an inch. But that's all I needed. Then I floxed the bushings in place and installed the studs to align them for cure. I aimed a hair dryer at each bushing, rotating it to another every 5 minutes, to accelerate the cure - this worked great.

Getting the studs back OUT proved to be a major difficulty. There's really no good way to do this, especially without damaging the studs. What I ended up doing was threading on a closed-end box wrench, then a washer (to protect the nut), then a nut. I then hammered at the box wrench as close to the stud as I could until it pulled out. Sort of a primitive slide hammer. It worked OK, I guess.

Next I installed the spacer assemblies in the gear legs, then installed the whole thing in the fuselage. It fit! What's more, it fits without ANY play, and the legs are still dead on where they should be. I did tweak the fore-aft offset of one side a bit with a screwdriver, then installed the studs again for alignment and made a flox bead around the bushings, leaving that to cure overnight.

Getting the studs back OUT to do the last steps - making the BID wraps over the spacers, and floxing/BIDing on the final washers, is going to be a BITCH. On one side I had to use a hammer to get the stud in, with pretty firm raps. I have no idea how to get it back out now or in the future without damaging the studs or bushings. The only two options I can think of are either to buy a REAL slide hammer and figure out some safe way to hook it up to the ends of the studs, or to drill a small hole in the firewall aimed directly at the studs, then use a long steel rod (like a drill bit with its head ground flat) to let me hammer at the back side of it. I'll have to do something tomorrow - that's when I do the last step!

Flipping the plane over is always a memorable event, and doubly so right now given that it weighs so much. Adding the mains gave it a bit of an awkward pivot point. John and I flipped it together, again using a pulley slung from the ceiling to help raise the nose. We were a little too busy to take pictures during the actual event! One interesting change is that the vertical position required a lot of force to hold up (the mains were trying to pull it over), but once we started letting it down, the force decreased significantly. The semicircles on the strake ends really do work!

Seems like a never-ending series of steps, but at least this one is in the bag! This weekend I used a slide hammer to remove the studs, and removed the gear from the plane. This technique worked great, by the way - if your landing gear studs are "stuck", try a slide hammer. They're inexpensive, and you can attach them to a nut and washer on the end of the stud to pull it out. It took a while - the thing only moved a millimeter or two with each blow - but it was definitely the right tool for the job.

Adding the washers to the outside faces of the attach tabs was a pretty simple task. When it came time to fill in under the support MKMGA tubes, I routed the brake line through that section to give it some support. Other than that, not very exciting. Sometimes that's a good thing.

Shaping the landing gear cover was a little tricky so I spent some time on it. To form the NACA, I dug out the plans NACA scoop profile and used pins to poke marker holes where it belonged. And around the gear I formed a smooth curve that I'll eventually tweak into the gear fairings. The upper surface was just flat, but it still took some time because I knew that after doing the layup and adding micro, I was going to be proud, so I sanded everything to BELOW the bulkhead edges.

I did the layup the way you're supposed to, with a flox corner at the NACA transition. The only difference is, I did it all in one go. I glassed the NACA first, and let it set up a bit, then carefully trimmed its top edge flush with scissors, and carved a 45-degree angle into the foam with a razor blade. I made the flox corner, then laid up glass on top of it all. I'll trim it and cut it out tomorrow.

Shaping the inside of the landing gear cover was tricky because in some sections there was very little clearance around the gear itself. But its final shape is not very important so I just kind of "went with it". This shape is only 80% complete anyway. The fairing around the gear legs will need some tweaking to arrive at the final shape - I couldn't do that in one step.

I intentionally left some clearance so this cover sits IN the gear well by about a sixteenth of an inch. I can use that as room for additional layups to handle the fairings, and fill the rest with micro when I do the final finishing here.

Over the weekend I removed the landing gear cover and sanded the foam down for a good, even fit. I then glassed the inside of the cover.

To reinstall it, I 5-min epoxied some support strips across it and onto the fuselage. When I did, I inserted some thin spacers cut from some scrap, cured, 2-ply BID. That set the spacers off of the landing brake slightly - my fuselage bottom is finished, and I wanted to allow a bit of room for the micro later.

Then I crawled inside and carefully taped off the cover. I put a bead of micro into the corners and built a 2-ply BID lip along the major horizontal edges. These will become the attach tabs after I add some support and nut plates.

Step 5 - Axles, Brakes, and Brakelines
Status: In Progress 
Est Time: 12.00, Actual: 4.00
Est Cost: $ 0.00, Actual: $ 0.00
Date Completed: 04/23/2009

04-23-2009 (4 hours):
Installing the axles was an interesting process. I'm in a hangar, so my "wall" is the hangar door, 30 feet away. That makes for good accuracy with this procedure, but it also means I have a very high ceiling, and hanging plumb lines is difficult (or impossible)!

What I did instead was set up a straightedge across the gear, which I know are perfectly level and straight in the fuselage right now. I measured to its midpoint, and made a mark. I then measured equal lengths from each spar tip (which is also straight, and centered) to the nose to accurately find the centerline there, too. Finally, I set a laser line generator on a ledge on the back wall of the hangar so it projected a line through these two points. It took a LONG time to set up - almost 2 hours - because even tiny errors in angle became huge offsets when cast across the 50ft depth of the hangar.

Next, I used the laser level on each gear leg right at the axle's midpoint to cast a point onto the far wall. A level line between these points and through the centerline gave me the "current" gear leg setting, and most important, the axle height. In my case my distance was 30 ft, so according to the plans this called for a 1.5in toe-in adjustment to equal 1 degree. I measured and marked these points on the wall (door).

I started to flatten the legs to receive the axles, but this was hard going for me with my wrists. Poking around online, I noticed Hicks had made up for this by setting up a flox bed, and this seemed like a good method to me. I carefully drilled two of the four holes for each axle, taped the axles and greased some long bolts to go through them, laid down a bed of flox on each gear leg, then bolted on the axles. Since the leg was still a slight bit curved, I was able to adjust the toe-in just by adjusting the tightness of the two bolts. Very small changes (as little as an eighth of a turn of the nut) translated into very noticeable adjustments. After some tweaking, I was satisfied, and I cleaned up the flox that had squeezed out and walked away to let it cure.

Once the flox cured under each axle, I installed the Matco brake caliper and backplate, then marked where material should be removed for a close fit. It was slow going trimming the leg ends, but I managed it with a hack saw and a fresh blade, the Fein with a cheap, throw-away Harbor Freight blade, and several Dremel sanding drums.

I then prep-sanded the area, did the BID wrap, and installed each backing plate with flox. I didn't re-install the axles for this step, opting instead to use a block on each side to make sure the BID sits flat against the flox pad I had previously built up under each axle (which sets the toe-in). This way the BID wrap is over the top of that pad. I'll be sure to check the toe-in one final time when I install the axles.

Installing the wheels was relatively straightforward now that the axles are finished. I removed the axles, cleaned up the layup area, then reinstalled the axles with the Matco brake cylinders on them. I inflated the tires to 45psi for now, and installed the wheels. Looks great! I still need to pack the bearings with grease, install the heat shields, and get the brakes set up, so I didn't torque everything down yet. I'll take care of that once the brakes are done.

I may want to tweak this setup slightly later. My Matco kit included nylon fittings which I may want to replace with brass at some point (although they do appear to seal very well). But in any event, this step worked out fairly well. I won't fill the lines yet - I still need to plumb the lines to the wheels, and I'm waiting to pull the gear out one last time to install the correct screws on the hard points before I take that step.