IBob

It is an absolutely critical piece, both in terms of location and structural strength. The holes line up accurately and without difficulty. Check the pics I posted.

If a door won't shut, you can try slamming it progressively harder. Or you can look to see why.

First things forts Rmorton: First things first Rmorton: please tell me you are not lining stuff up by 'bashing it with a hammer'??????????? There is no way you should be bashing anything on an airframe with a hammer.

I don't suffer from motion sickness normally, but once took some medication before embarking on a racing yacht in the middle of a stormy night. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I lost my dinner after a couple of hours (I think most of us did), that was okay. But what I really didn't like was the weird after-affects of the meds. So if I was looking at taking meds to help with something like aerobatics, I would definitely be trying them beforehand to make sure they didn't make me feel weird.

Steve, someone here may correct me, and I'm happy to know if I've got it wrong. But I'm pretty confident I've got that right. As for the little brass bearings in the hangers, some folk get a lot of wear there, and there are various upsized replacement schemes. But I'm pretty sure the wear comes from having them too loose: it is the relative tightness that prevents the bearing tilting. I have 130hrs on my S now, with no detectable wear to those bearings. A VG on the field has 800+hrs, also with no significant wear.

Bodie, I think I'm right in saying that the VG Savannah (and the Zenith 701 before it) have no pivot point there at all. The way it works is the (inboard) flaperon is a rigid unit that pivots on it's two wing hangars. Those are the aileron pivots doing all the work, not that inboard pivot. More important is to set those flaperon to wing hanger pivots up correctly: nip them up tight, then back them off until they are just loose before inserting the splitpin. Then check them again after a few hours, they want to be a snug as possible , but still rotate freely. This way you avoid the wear at that point that some builders seem to experience.

Rmorton, I would suggest making a new hole next to the damaged one, but not too close, perhaps 3 diameters minimum distance? Hopefully you can then (also) close off the damaged hole with a rivet. To reduce the possibility of damage to the holes, it is good to have tapered podgers that fit the hole size correctly when inserted. For the smaller holes I used tapered awls. For the larger holes I bought a set of cheap pin punches, and ground then polished a taper onto them.

I asked the same question at that stage too, Steve. It's a great aircraft. But we all have our moments with the manual, believe me!

Hi Bodie. It's not held on. The bolt, which is welded at it's head onto it's backing plate (SF341), acts as a pivot point, and that is all. (When you assemble the inner flaperon/s to the wings, they pivot on the wing hangers, and this maintains the lateral position of the flaperons. The lever SS410/411 is then bolted to the inboard end of the flaperon with the 3bolts shown. So no nut or other hardware is required on SF341.) It's a good idea to make sure the steelwork SS410/411 is well primed, especially inside the tubular part of it, as this is an area that may corrode.

I'd like to listen to it, Garfly, but I just don't think I can do 90 minutes at that pace.......(

There's another elephant in the room (or moose in the bar) here: the assumption that field maintenance personnel are all capable of maintaining and refurbishing machinery to the same standard as the plant that assembled the original item. In the case of aircraft, where maintenance personnel seem to be held up as shining of examples of perfection, we may like to think this is the case. But in reality I doubt it very much. All of which is to say it can be a really good idea not to set about fixing it if it aint broke.......in my view.......

Hi Marty, I have no practical experience of fibreglassing, but this: do use a gelcoat first if you can, otherwise you will a have a myriad of tiny pinholes in the finished product, which require repeated filling and sanding, and are surprisingly difficult to get rid of.

The Savannah has a float operated reed switch in the top of the receiver tank, an indicator light at the RH instrument panel, and a test button. I have duplicated the indicator at the LH with a large flashing LED (from RS Components). It is important to know that the test button only tests the indicators, not the reed switch (and they can fail). So I periodically test the entire circuit by starting and taxiing with all tanks valved off. My preflight checks always include a run through the fuel system, from level gauges through tank and isolator valves to fuel pump, so I am confident of being correctly valved on prior to takeoff.

Same with the Savannah: 6L plus warning light, gives you 20min to get your s**t together..........

There's much to be said for the small receiver tank some aircraft have in the fuselage, where fuel flows from the main tanks to the receiver, then on to the engine........

As an alternative to tying the fuse down: I predrilled the top holes by pulling the cabin steel to the firewall with a clamp and block I hung the motor mount on the fuse with light strops, to hold it there while I worked on the bottom mounts. I then pulled the top mount together with cheap longer bolts, then replaced them with the correct bolts. (Note: the pics show clekos, but all rivets were in before final fitting of the engine mount).

RMorton, the hardware.....nuts bolts and washers......are identified in the list of materials at the start of each chapter. Measure them to locate the correct ones. The AN# is the diameter of the bolt in sixteenths of an inch and the ##A suffix is the length, in eighths of an inch. So AN4-06A is 4/16" diameter, 6/8" long, or 1/4"diemater, 3/4" long. 5 x AN4-06A bolts 2 x AN4-07A bolts 2 x AN5-17A bolts Nylock nuts and washers to fit all those, plus 6 x 24 penny washers. The instructions are less than clear, but the order of assembly is as per the order of illustrations etc in the manual: 1. Bottom mounts. 2. Top mount. 3. Side mounts. The top mount is pulled into place as you tighten the bolts. I used cheap overlength bolts to start pulling this into place, then replaced them with the correct aircraft bolts. Once all this is in place, you will find that the underside of the front fuse, including the extruded aluminium angles, is now curved.

Later: when you put those bottom bolts through, you will use the 6x24 'penny' washers provided on the inside. I clearly remember filing a scallop in the edge of the washers to clear that second rivet back. So my second rivet back remained in. The first rivet would definitely have been removed. Which is fine: it is holding the angular extrusion (and bottom skin) to the firewall. Since the engine mount is bolted to both the angular extension and the firewall at this point (so holding them together) the rivet is not required.

Hi Bodie. The manual certainly doesn't spell it out. It made no sense to me to be bolting steel down onto raised rivet heads. I certainly removed the very front rivet. I'm pretty sure I filed a small scallop into the rear of the steelwork to clear the second rivet back. I'll have a look when next out to the hangar, but it could be a couple of days: the weather is no good here at present.

Here is part 2:

The raffle was for a fly in a WW1 aircraft.

Supposedly the pilots also ingested the oil, and suffered the laxative results. A few years back I won a raffle for a fly in an SE5a: to enter, I bought a ticket, but also had to down a large tot of castor oil. I was also offered a tot of some fruit liquer (blackcurrant?), which some WW1 pilots claimed as an antidote. They told me it would take 2 to 3 hrs to start emptying my system. They were about right............

It's a dead giveaway: 'Sniffs the air......" Yep, them Fokkers have been around again..."............

Rotary engines take air and fuel into the crankcase through the hollow (stationary) crankshaft. From there it makes it's way to the individual cylinder inlet ports, usually via external duct pipes. To maintain crankcase etc lubrication, oil is injected with the air fuel mixture, as it is in 2-stroke motors, though the rotary is a 4-stroke motor. Here is an interesting summary: https://www.historynet.com/the-truth-about-rotaries.htm It includes the quote: “Rotary engines became quickly outdated for a couple of reasons, but mostly because of the large quantity of Castrol required to keep a squadron of rotary-powered airplanes in the air. Most rotary engines consume about five or six quarts of oil per hour.”

In many early engines, the valve gear is exposed, so there is no way to capture and recirculate the oil that lubricates the rockers and stems: it is what is known as a total loss oil system. In something like the rotary Oberursal engine, there would be the added difficulty of how to get oil back from the heads, given that the whole engine is rotating. As Facthunter said, this oil blows back over aircraft and pilot. And you get whiffs of it all over the airfield when these things are flying.