Refurbishing the garage as a shop

Due to lots of odd complications, I decided to simply refurbish the garage as a shop to finish the Onex. What's needed is insulation and new electrical stuff. There will be no water or sink, but it will have to do for now. The first thing to do is to tear down the plates to apply insulation. I will do wall for wall.

And it's good to be back to build.

Lots of things have happened in the mean time. I got a 1/2 share in a ICP Savannah. Super fun bush plane.

 And about 1/10 share in a Super Decathlon. We are about 10 guys (old men :-) flying some aerobatics.

The Super Decathlon has been for repairs all summer. I have only flown it a couple of hours yet. But the Onex is finally first up on the priority again once the garage is OK to work in. I still have plans for a larger shop, but I insulating and heating the garage will be a good thing in any case.

This is the third shop I'm building (not really building this one, but still). The next one will be the fourth. I didn't imagine this when starting building an aircraft, a long time ago :-)

Modded trailer for hauling the Onex

 Got a 2.5 mm "walking plate" aluminium and some bolts. Cut two plates to shape and fastened them with two bolts. The trailer is made so the rear lights swing to the side when the airplane (or boat) is carried.

For the tail wheel I just used the existing bow rest. Removed the rubber to buffer the bow, and inserted two poly-carbonate plates cut to shape. With those plates the tail wheel gear fits like a glow in between and is held secure against swaying to the sides, in the same manner as the bow buffer rubber when a boat is hauled.

With this mod I can simply exchange bow buffer with the plates and I can haul my boat or the Onex as I wish

The aircraft is fastened to the trailer using ropes through the tie down loops in each inner wing.

Trailer and moving

Family affairs has finally settled. As a result this means moving to a new house and making a new shop to build in (from scratch yet again). First things first, I need a trailer to move the plane, and later to use it to haul the plane to/from the airport. I bought a boat trailer that seems to work, way more than enough weight can be carried, and it is long enough.

I just have to add a couple of plates for the wheels and a different fastening system for the tail wheel. The plane will be travelling in reverse on the road, which should work just fine keeping the speed moderate.

New propeller

 Got the new propeller from Prince some time ago (in Mars). It took some time, but it is nice indeed.

  

Re-built the throttle quadrant

The throttle quadrants from Sonex are reverse throw, and not all that long throw. The ULPower engines are set up for positive throw, and longer throw. Took apart the throttle quadrant, made a new hole, one new friction fix stop member and "mirrored" it. Now it should work also for the ULPower.

The engine mount from Kaolin arrived today

Got the mount, and it seems to fit like a glow, at least on the fuselage side. Included were also an NDT test which showed no cracks in welding.

Electrical System ULP V06

After several comments/mail and reading books about this stuff, I think I'm finally converging to something usable.

The primary system is taken straight out of the ULPower manual. I have added the fuel pump 2 and manual switches for fuel pump 1 and 2. The isolation switch is a manual one installed with the battery (this may change, not sure yet).

The Mascot 8660 is removed. The reason is it will be impossible to isolate all the components from the common ground. The RDAC needed for EGT, CHT and MAP must be grounded to the engine, or it wont be able to read anything, and so on. Ideally all the RDACs should be in the primary system, and communications should be optical (fiber), maybe in 100 years. With a common ground, all isolation is gone. The 8660 would really only function as a current limiting device. Another reason is the 8660, when taking into account the efficiency (81%) will be too small. This could be fixed by dividing the system and install another ECB, but then things gets too complex for this little aircraft.