This thing has got wings! ...

... It must be a plane - So were the neighbors thinking today while driving by my workshop.

After working on a few contraptions allowing to move fuselage and wings around and having a runway built in front of my workshop, today the conditions were perfect to have a wing fitting session. I got help from my friend François Hautin (a former colleague from Alcatel and NC State) which allowed me to communicate in French, a language in which we are both better at cursing than English.

 One wing inside, one wing outside: this will allow me to carry on the building at home for a few more months. There is nothing like a 30 seconds commute to work!

François is recovering from the stress of carrying the two wings from my basement to my "Taxiway" which requires slaloming between the trees of my backyard:

 No damage done and the wings in place =  A happy builder!

 

Sequel to LSA America's visit

On our way back from Littleton, we stopped at Chuck Borsuk's workshop where Terry was to perform an inspection per his accredited EAA technical counselor function. Chuck is building a Pietenpol, a classic wooden plane and we were not disappointed by his workshop which feels more like a cabinet maker's than a plane builder's. Most impressing was the organization and tidiness of a shop whose tools and machines, beside Pietenpol parts are mostly producing sawdust and wood shavings. Not being qualified to comment on the work done so far, I let you make your own mind by looking at the following pictures. Needless to say, Chuck passed his inspection without reserve.

I have to say that there are rumors that the parrot bribed Terry's into giving Chuck a good grade... One might argue that a bird should be a good source of advice for a Tech Counselor but this one has clipped wings!

A visit to LSA America inc.

LSA America is the one of the few manufacturers of certified LSAs made in the USA. What is even more exciting for our EAA Chapter 1114 based in Apex, NC is that they are located in Littleton, NC just one and a half hour drive from the Research Triangle area. As the owners of LSA America, Doug and Betty Helmpstead are also the owners of my flight school, B-Bar-D aviation located at Sanford/KTTA. I had the privilege of a private visit to their manufacturing plant which opened in May of 2011. Accompanying me were fellow chapter members Chuck Borsuk, Terry Gardner and Niels Nielsen.
The current facility is located in the former " Littleton Industrial Building", an 54,000 square feet facility with plenty of room to spare:

The plans are to establish permanent production operations at the Halifax-Northampton Regional Airport. LSA America will create 34 new jobs and invest $400,000 during the next three years.
The State of North Carolina is helping LSA America through the "One NC Fund", other partners that helped with this project include: the N.C. Department of Commerce, N.C. Community Colleges, the Small Business and Technology Development Center (SBTDC), the N.C. Rural Center, the Halifax County Economic Development Commission, Halifax County Business Horizons, Halifax County, the Town of Littleton, the Halifax-Northampton Regional Airport Authority and North Carolina's Northeast Commission.

The Allegro:
  Specifications:
                                    MTOW: 1,320 lbs
                                    Empty Weight: 622 lbs (average)
                                    Max Useful Load: 698 lbs
                                    Fuel Capacity: 17 U.S. Gal (102 lbs)
                                    Payload: 596 lbs
                                    Range: 500 miles

The Allegro LSA is available with either the 80 HP  Rotax 912UL  or the 100 HP Rotax 912ULS.

Optional Equipment: Floats, Skis, Banner and Glider Tow Kits

There are about 500 Allegros flying oversees (with 57 registered in the USA per the FAA registry as of September 2011), all but one have been manufactured in the Czech  Republic.

So far one Made in USA Allegro has been produced and delivered by LSA America. It is currently used by a flight school in Michigan.

Made in USA Allegro #2 close to completion:

The wings of #2:

Note about the Allegro's wings: they are double-tapered which is unusual in LSAs and explains, according to Doug, the superior performances of the Allegro. This feature is more visible on the following picture:

Made in USA Allegro #3 already started:

Currently when a plane is ready it is trucked to the Halifax-Northampton Regional Airport for its flight tests. This step will not be necessary when the permanent production facility opens there in about a year.
We visited a few manufacturing station:

Wing Jigs:

Composite Lab where a cockpit dashboard is curing:

Doug Hempstead is explaining, part in hands, his strategy of switching parts manufacturing from outside contractors to in-house to better control quality and availability of components:

Some prototypes in early R&D stage: the Vampire pushers (the double seater is the object of a study by NC State's Aeronautic Department to decrease the weight of its composite hull)

What's next?
Doug Hempstead has the objective to build one Allegro a week. When will he get there depends on a number of factors some he controls some he does not. For example he mentioned the difficulties he is facing with immigration laws. Currently the manufacturing expertise on the factory floor comes from former employees of the former Czech company that used to produce the Allegro. Doug is facing great difficulties getting appropriate visas for these specialists whose involvement is critical to restarting the manufacturing as well as training new employees. By lack of an adequate visa these employees have to be sent back to the Czech republic every few months which is very disrupting and costly. Despite all the difficulties he is facing in this starting phase Doug is optimist and confident in the value of his product that he dares everyone to compare!
See more at http://www.allegrolsa.com/dare_to_compare
For those members of our EAA Chapter 1114, if you are interested in flying an Allegro, visit B-Bar-D  Aviation at Sanford airport, they offer discovery flight and if you are a pilot you can rent an Allegro at a very attractive rate. You also can take flight lessons as B-Bar-D is a well appointed Flight School (Trust me, I learned to fly and got my Sport Pilot Certificate there!)

How to build a taxiway

Having been slowed down all Summer and facing now Winter, I have decided to postpone my move to an airport hangar until late Winter or early Spring. One of the delaying factors is the release of the new avionics kit based on Dynon's Skyview which was initially expected for July but has been delayed one month every month since. To be fair VANs never committed for a release date. They are facing a complex problem because they have several changes to do in parallel and they are dealing with the E-LSA certification of a retrofit for the first time. This delay is not that of a problem for me because I still have a lot to do on the finishing kit but some fellow builders are blocked at a time they thought they would be flying - how frustrating! I therefore decided to do a maximum in my workshop to cope with this situation and the first conclusion I drew was that I needed a large slab in front of my workshop to perform the wings as well as empennage fittings that initially I had planned to do in an airport hangar.
How to build a taxiway?
First build a drive way and then taxi an airplane on it!
Here is my taxiway under construction:

And here it is completed:

Now the RV-12 is on its stands, ready to move outside!

We have a flap control handle...

... but no flaps connected yet!
This is the fruit of yesterday and today's labor:

The funny thing is that in the Allegro that I fly, the trim is manual and the flaps controlled by an electric motor while on the R-12 it's just the opposite. While I like the direct manual control of the flaps in the RV-12, I don't like the electric trim. In the Allegro, the position of the trim button tells you where your trim tab is set, an information that you don't have in the RV-12.
Also worked a bit on the rest of page 32-08:

As I was working on the torque tube spacers, I found bizarre that I had to drill #12 a hole in which an LP4-3 was supposed to go (usually we drill #30 for LP4-3). I did a search on VAF forum and, sure enough, the issue had been raised ... two years ago by John Peck. The answer made sense: the rivet is just a temporary holder as the spacers are glued to the torque tube.

Page 32-06

Completed, with some pain caused by the paint:
Not a big deal but this may save some future builders the aggravation I went through yesterday.
Steps 4 and 5 are about attaching the WD-1215 Flapperon Torque arms which is happening in very tight quarters. In step 4 I found quickly that the AN3 bolt would not pass through the holes of WD-1215 because of the paint. A bit of filing solved the problem. Unfortunately, after struggling through the attachment both WD-1215, I found that, in step 5, I had the same problem for attaching the WD-1215 to the pushrod assemblies! There is no way that you can file the inside of these holes once the WD-1215 are attached: I had the disassemble the two WD-1215 to clear the holes!
... and I consider myself lucky that the 4 AN-960 that were superglued to the brackets stayed in place through the two installations.

 

 Page 32-07

 Completed