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Refinshing
Our
Main Rotor Blades
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Since we had such a hard landing when our secondary shaft broke
we took a look under the paint where the blade straps contact the main rotorshaft. It may not make a difference but if nothing else it made us feel alot better not to see any visible damage.
Done 2/2/05
Febuary 8th 2005
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We
have
some scratches in the top of our Slave blade and the bottom of our
master blade
so
we pretty much did the same thing to them to make sure we didn't
have any issues with them.
We're definitely going to have to do some paint work on the blade but it will be worth it knowing that there isnt any damage hiddin under the paint.
An
Upside to this is
we're
going to have some orange tipped rotor blades now
which
if you haven't figured it out by now makes Damama happy lol.
February 15th 05
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We took
these photos so we could remember what tip weight screw goes where
so when were
done we can reinstall them back in the exact place they were in last
time we ballanced our ship.
It took us all day to prep the surface and mask the blades off.
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This is all the paint stuff we used
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That sure is an Orange, Orange huh! lol
So far, for amateurs, they appear to have came out looking pretty good, we'll have to wait and see what they look like tomorrow after we remove all the masking paper and tape to see what they really look like.
Once
again we used PPG
paint
products
from Volunteer Paint and Body Supply
Invoice# 38503
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Light Gray
Primer - DP 50 LF |
Orange
Orange,
DCC QT |
February 16th 05
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Puuuuurrrrrrtyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!
Now all
we have to wait until the paint cures out for a day or so
so we can sand
the ridges down to a nice smooth finish
You
wouldn't think so but so far its taken us
at least 12
constant hours of work and we still ain't done lol.
Even
though the paint we used was a 2 part paint we still had to keep
them in a controlled environment.
We had to keep
these things warm for 16 hours or so to get the new paint to cure because
if the ambient
tempture falls below 58 degrees the paint completely stops it's
curing process and won't dry untill it gets warmer.
These are our new trim tab benders thingies we made.
Watching
paint dry
is kinda
boring so while we had some down time we made these 2 thingies.
We made two of them to see which one will work better. Our thinking is that the larger one should make it a bit easier to make more percise ajustments on the trim tabs, (trailing edges of the blades ) because it has more leverage then the shorter one.
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These look like a simple thing to make but don't let that fool you lol.
First we had to choose the type and thickness of acrylic to use. Then we had to figure out how to make an 80 thousands groove in it. We got lucky and found an old 8 inch skill saw blade in our collection of missfit blades that could be manipulated to fit our table saw.
After that milestone we made a megshift guide with wood and some clamps so we could accurately to run the matrerial across the blade.
It took 3 trail runs before we got it right because acrylics don't like table saws lol. After that we drilled and threaded 3/8 inch holes into them and ran them across the buffing for wheel for a bit.
In the end we whooped em and came away with what we think will be some pretty good tools that should make it much easier for us to bend the trim tabs and save some bucks in the process.
If you have the bucks and a life and don't want to go through all this and make your own,
John Spurling at Pro-Drive sells a ready made unit similar to this and I'm sure he'd be happy to sell you one lol.
http://www.flyapro.com/Dynamic%20Balancer.htm
February 21st 05
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Back on the ship and back in the trailer
ready for the next Phase of this adventure, Hauling it out to the airpost and seeing it all work again lol.
END
