I'm a Little Twisted, But...

[EZFlap 12]

... the fuselage of Avid B s/n 234 is not !

 

Today, a friend showed up with a truck at my house, and we loaded the fuselage into the pickup bed with the tail sticking up oh about four feet above the cab. With me standing in the bed of the truck, arms wrapped around the rear fuselage, we drove a couple of miles to his car repair shop.

 

Along the way, we passed quite a few people who for some strange reason were totally shocked to see an airplane in a pickup truck, driving through the streets of Los Angeles with some idiot standing there in the back holding it down. I could see them thinking to themselves, "must be one of those twisted Hollywood types doing some sort of a publicity stunt."

 

Well... sort of.

 

So for my part, I acted like it was totally normal, that I knew exactly what I was doing, and we Hollywood types do this sort of thing all the time. I smiled and waved at them because after all... I was the Grand Marshal of the bent airplane parade.

 

We got to Rudy's shop, walked the fuselage in, and I smiled. Because there, just as promised, were six or eight big ass anchors embedded in the concrete floor. We set up the fuselage on wooden blocks at three locations: The port side wing strut fitting, the port side forward landing gear fitting, and the starboard side wing strut fitting. We had positioned the fuselage catty-corner at an angle between two of the ground anchors. One of the anchors was under the port side rear wing spar fitting cluster, and the other anchor was below the starboard side forward wing spar fitting cluster.

 

We tied the port rear spar cluster down to the anchor with a ratchet strap. We ran the cable from a come-along from another floor anchor, up through an eye bolt attached to the anchor under the starboard side forward spar cluster. A loop of nylon strap went around the cluster and hooked in to the come-along.

 

After two solid hours of pulling the starboard cluster down a little, letting it spring back up, measuring, re-measuring, and pulling it again a little... we finally straightened out the twist in the old girl's body. Wooden blocks and steel bars were arranged on the door frame and upper fuselage tubes, and the pressure from a large C-clamp made the slight bows in the tube disappear. A small bubble level (ripped out of a string line level) with help from a 6 foot bar level, verified that our efforts had succeeded.

 

The forward and rear spar carry through tubes at the top of the cabin are now parallel.

 

So while I may be twisted more than just a little, my Avid's upper fuselage wing mounting is not.

[EDMO 1078]

My fuselage has made several 100 mile round trips to the welder shop sitting flat on the floor in the 6 foot bed of my little Ford Ranger - Just throw a couple of ratchet straps across it, and tape a red rag on the tail - about 75% of trip is on Interstate Highways and the rest is on rural two-lane roads - No Problemo!

EDMO

Edited 7 Dec 2014 by Ed In Missouri

[akflyer 1427]

I hauled mine over to my buddies house in the back of an old van when I had to rebuild the fuse.  I didnt have good anchor points to pull from so it was saw horses, levels, heat and beat cut out old and weld in new tubes as needed   Some tubes were bucked bad so they ahd to be replaced, but I straightened a lot of the tubes with a hammer and block of wood.

Nice to see the progress your making on getting the old bird back in the air!

 

[EDMO 1078]

since I have changed my ribs to the modified Riblett (Kitfox 4) pattern, I guess I need to measure my HS and Wing incidence before loading it in my little truck to make the 100 mile roundtrip to the welder - got to get new struts welded, and braces for the nose gear, so if incidence needs to be changed to zero, then I might as well start cutting and fitting that too.

I am just a little confused about my incidence, since I built my wings the old way, with about 1 1/2 inches of washout, but my rear spar attaches about 1" higher than the front spar - got to take some time and figure out how my real incidence compares to the later ones with only 1/2 inch of twist. It may be a lot worse? - but no matter what, it will fly!

EdMO

Edited 19 Dec 2014 by Ed In Missouri