Building our new Tail Boom

Step One

New Stringer Installation

Donna whistling while she works

One stringer down and one to go.

Our tail boom skeleton finished and ready for the new skin

The whole process of replacing the two stringers only took a little over an hour to do. Looks like were ready for what folks say is the tough part, putting on a new skin when it gets here and we get the time.

Pictures of the tail rotor pully mounts in the bulkheads

We checked the bulkheads with a fine tooth comb looking for cracks and or wear and didn't find any anomolies at all.  You couldn't even tell the pulleys were ever installed at all.

December 28th 2004

Woohoo the new skin is in!

Donna and I are kinda stuck on hold at this point trying to decide which one of us is going to remove it from the box and cut the straps to unleash this beast from its confines.  From past experience I'm pretty sure she's going to win out and make me do it, <sigh>.  The metal is 12 foot long and our table is only 8 so before we can get to that point we have to make an addition in length and then we can get started.  Today being December 30th, yup New Years Eve, Eve that isn't going to happen until oh I'd say about next Thursday when we get over our hangovers we're going to have saturday lol.

Happy New Years folks

Cya sometime next year !

Monday
January 3rd 2005

Today we made an extension for our table and got started on the tail boom skin.

Unrolling the 4 x 12 sheet of aluminum wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, it only took 3 of us to do it safely lol.

Once we got the sheet on the table we noticed that the material had a grain to it

that ran length wise from end to end. We took a look at the original skin and saw that when RotorWay had cut it they had done it on an angle with the grain running to the right.  Humm we have no idea if this grain plays a part in the strength of the tail boom so it was one of those head scratching times again.

We decided to cut the skin just like Rotorway had originally done.

Actually it worked out better any way because it gave us a much bigger cut off left over to make the bottom 3 cap peices from so life is good lol.

We laid the old skin facing inside up on the new material. Next we matched the one side and then marked out an out line about an inch larger then the original on the other 3 sides.

We then used our nifty electric metal cutting shears to cut it.

The fellow in this picture is Wess, 
He's the guy that takes up the slack for me around the shop while I'm playing helicopter.
Most of the time he just shakes his head and keeps right on going in the other direction lol.

Blocked out and ready for the fun part

Here we go with the rest of the plan lol.

The idea was to get the old skin to lay as flat as the new one so we could pre drill all of our holes.  We cut 2 x 4 lumber into the lengths we needed and screwed them down to the table sandwiching the two pieces together. In all the other places put heavy boxes where there was so much as a slight raise in the old material.  It ain't pretty but it worked lol.

There are some people in the world you can dress up and take out
but Tracy, the gal in these pictures, just isn't one of them lol.

That cut out that was left over the from the electric shears was just to kewl to throw away
so Tracy spent some time pondering its many uses.

We got all the pop rivet holes drilled and clecoed just as the 5 o'clock whistle blew

so we decide to declare victory and head to the barn for the night.

Tuesday
January 4th 2005

Today was pretty kewl.
We got to remove all the clamp down boards and witness what we did. At that point we drilled all the holes that were under the boards and then it was time to remove all the clecos and discard the old skin.

Next we finish cut the the metal to size and then deburred every hole on both sides.

Here we go,
this is the part where we find out if this is going to work or not lol. Well so far so good, we had about 4 holes out of a couple hundred that were slightly off.  The plan is to drill those out just prior to instaling the pop rivets in them.

We ended up making up some special ratchet straps for the job.
We bolted the strap to the ratchet part and feed the other end of the strap directly into the barrel of the ratchet.

With the majority of the clecos installed we couldn't roll the unit over with out the risk bending some of them.
We ended up using our old tail boom supports we made way back when which allowed us to rotate the entire thing making it alot easier to work on.

We didnt get as much done today as we had hoped.

All the rivets are just about installed, all we have to go is one top stringer and the main part of the tail boom will be done.
After that it's on to making the 3 bottom plates.  For that were going to have to go bug our friends at Magnum Enterprises to let us use their sheet metal bender to make creases in the panels before we can rivet them on.

Fabricating and installing the 3 lower panels

We had it going on until we got to the rear panel.  Compressing the last 20 or so inches of the tail boom seems like it's going to be impossible but with alot of perserverance and a few choice swear words it finally does go lol.  It probably took us close to an hour to accomplish that part of the job but we won lol.

Installing the tail rotor slider rails went well.

We were going to add an aftermarket slider assembly but later we found out it weighed a little more than the factory setup.  Donna and I are pretty light weight wise and if  we add more weight in the tail rotor area we'd have a hard time keeping the ship from going into hook joint trying to obtain fast forward speeds. As it is we have to put a 21lb weight bag on Donna's floorboard if we want to fly faster than 80 knots so this would only add to it.  On a good note Donna grew about 18 more pounds over the past holidays so it may have worked out lol.

We also got the backing plate for the vertical fin installed today.

Today we mounted the 2 access panels, ballast weight mount, vertical fin and the horizontal fins

All finished and ready to be torn down for painting.

Today we fit the tail rotor, tail rotor covers, strobe light mounting hole and the access hole for checking the tailrotor belt tension.

Lord willing,
Monday we will tear it all back down and store all the parts away so they don't get damaged while were waiting on the tail boom to come back from the paint shop.

Wouldn't you know it!
We got it all ready and the folks that are going to paint our new tail boom are covered up so we'll have to wait until they get an opening.

On an upside view,
it isn't like we don't have plenty of other things to do while were waiting on them, lol

February 8th 2005

Woo Hooo!!  We got Paint!!

Well here it is ready to be hung on the ship and reassembled.

We transported this 12 foot monster in Damama's Suburban,
6 more inches and we wouldn't have made it lol.

 
Fox Paint and Body
of Oak Ridge, Tennessee,
did the prep and paint work.

865-481-3100

We dropped it off at about 10 am in the morning
and got a call to say it was ready to go at 3:30 pm that afternoon,
5 and 1/2 hours, how's that for fast lol.

Robert

their painter,
 did one hell of a good job on it, as in we couldn't be happer with it.

I'm not sure if they would make a habit of doing this kind of work but if your close enough to them and would like some quality instruction, paint or paint work done these guys are definitely some good folks to deal with.

Wayne Fox,

the Owner of Fox Paint and Body also owns a paint and body supply company specializing in PPG paint products.  Mr. Fox himself spent a couple of hours explaining to me what needed to be done to paint this thing correctly.  All in all it involved 4 stages, sanding, conditioning, etch priming and finally putting on the top coat.

The finish product with no buffing what so ever has the look and feel of powder coat
and they did it with a minimal amount of paint so it wouldn't add any more weight to the tail boom than was absolutely necessary and it came out as good as it gets.

Fox Paint and Body

 is located at 91 Midway Lane in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

865-483-6000

February 9th 05

Almost there!!!

Today we got the tailboom installed along with EVERYTHING that goes on it, to kewl Huh!  Everything went just like it was supposed to right down to setting the tail rotor tension.  The whole operation took us 9 hours to complete.

We did find one problem though.

Evidently the folks that painted our ship the first time
just used a spray can to paint the horizontal trim fin brackets.

When we tightened the bolts down on the pilots side horizontal fin the paint departed from the metal.  There wasn't any sign of preperation of the metal or primer so it looks like well either have to tear it down and get it properly done or keep getting out our touchup paint and goober it.  Sure is a shame to have all this work, time and money invested into this thing and have something like this happen.

February 10th 05

Today was spent doing all the finishing touches on our tailboom

Ballast Weight Mount

Com Radio Antenna

The front and rear tail rotor pullys

Horizional trim fin tube

Strobe light wiring

Safty wiring on right hand slider bracket

 Random shots of the tail rotor end

February 20th 05

Today we put the tail rotor Danger and N numbers stickers on.

The rest of the day was spent checking all the parts and settings on the main rotor blades.  When that was over we put the heli back in it's trailer for the last time until it gets back to the airpark.

Hopefully by next weekend February 26th,
well be set up in airpark once again so we can begin our next venture of this endeavor which will be the
tracking and balancing the main rotor blades.

UPDATE LOG BOOK

Not Done

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