It's Never "Finished"

Despite having "finished" the restoration of the Austria in 2013, There were still some squawks that needed fixing, and I desired several other improvements to the glider and trailer.

It began again at the end of April 2014, right after I finished my A&P classes. The Austria came back to Tony's garage, and I wasted no time modifying my wing stand by making a wooden block shaped to match the underside of the wing. I later added a layer of padding and some carpet after varnishing the piece of wood. It seems to work well after one use so far.

Many of the other improvements involved the trailer. The taillights rarely ever worked, and they were very dim. Additionally, the trailer lacked a set of front marker lights, making it technically illegal to trailer on the road, so replaced the taillights, rear marker lights, and added front marker lights, all LED lights from www.etrailer.com. They have a decent selection of lights. I was able to find taillights that were a drop-in replacement for my old ones. I had to splice into the trailer harness at the front for the new marker lights. I found the bus bar in the trailer with nothing connected to it. This is pretty ghetto wiring by my standards, but it will work.

I got tired of filling the trunk with the fuselage lifter, handle, trailer jack, wood block, tire covers, wing stand, etc. every time I wanted to move the trailer. In preparation for taking the glider to the Lawrenceville VSA rally, I needed more trunk space, so I made this removeable box to corral all of my rigging equipment at the front of the trailer in the otherwise wasted space ahead of the fuselage and between the wings.

Before assembling the glider, the box must be emptied and removed. To facilitate this, it has wheels on the back that contact the floor as soon as the front of the box is lifted. This lets me roll the box out the front hatch.

Draw latches obtained from McMaster-Carr are used to attach the front of the box to the trailer. The aft end is secured by a block bolted to the floor of the trailer with two bolts protruding from it parallel to the floor and long axis of the trailer. These bolts fit into slots in the back wall of the box, keeping the back end from floating up or side-to-side. The rails in the trailer also constrain the side-to-side motion.

Here is the empty box inside the trailer.

Here are the new taillights. They are considerably brighter than the ones they replaced. I went the extra mile and made rubber gaskets to hopefully seal the inside of the trailer better from water intrusion through the lights. I made similar gaskets for the side marker lamps. I also added a bunch of reflective tape to make the trailer easier to see at night.

Here is the trailer, complete with all of its new lights and reflective tape. I hope people will be able to see it and give me a wide berth at night.

I also need a wing wheel. As of early June, this is still a work in progress. I'm hoping to have it finished for the Low Performance Contest my club is hosting in July.

This is what I ended up with for wingtip wheels to replace the skids- a small plastic wheel with hard rubber tire, mounted to an extruded aluminum bracket with an AN24 clevis bolt for an axle. Since the bolt can theoretically rotate, I used a cotter pin to secure the nut instead of a nylon insert locknut.

To prevent the top edge of the door from getting torn up, I trimmed a scrap piece of diamond plate aluminum to the edge of the trailer. This way I won't have to replace the door every few years from wearing the edge down.

The wheel brake on the glider never really worked, and I discovered that was because the cable sheathing had pulled through the handle and no adjustment was possible. I removed the old cable, slightly modified the airbrake handle to provide a better means of restraining the cable sheathing, and then repainted the airbrake handle. The green isn't even close to the interior color, but I guess it's better than painting it some color other than green.

I ended up bonding the wheel brackets to the wooden pad the skid was mounted to originally. So far so good, they haven't broken off yet...

I also painted the glareshield flat black so I could remove the black felt I hastily velcroed on last year right before the contest. Now I have to make a mount to connect my GPS logger to the canopy frame since I don't want to try to put white velcro on the new black paint.

As it sometimes goes, fixing one problem on the trailer creates another. I had replaced the wooden guide rails for the wing dolly and fuselage dolly with extruded aluminum tubing, which solved the problem of the wing dolly getting stuck 3/4 of the way down the trailer, causing someone to have to crawl into the trailer and free it while I get tired very quickly of holding the root of the wing. Now, the rails are too close together, and they don't properly guide the fuselage dolly into its latch in the trailer, so I have to make multiple attempts at inserting the fuselage. This is something I will try to fix at the VSA rally during some downtime.

I still need to finish the wing wheel and see if I can talk Tony's wife into sewing a canopy cover for me. I'll need to make patterns and buy materials. If I can get that done before the contest, then I can tie down the Austria behind the trailer if there is no bad weather in the forecast, which will save the energy of myself and my crew. This ship is too heavy to rig every day for a week, at least for someone like me that hasn't quite gotten back in shape yet.

Now that the 2014 soaring season is over, I finally have some time to update this website. The wing wheel was finished in time for the R10 North contest, but I didn't even have time to take a picture. I also made a tail dolly based on several I saw in use at the annual VSA regatta in Lawrencville, Illinois. It is very simple- just a triangular piece of 3/4" plywood with a caster on each corner, and an aluminum pivot that interfaces with the tailwheel. At the Wichita VSA regatta in September, I put new felt on the tail dolly.

One item I had been wanting to make for a long time is a new seat cushion. The original seat cushion (the maroon one on the left in the image above) is about an inch thick, but the foam squishes down to nothing. Even with this cushion, flights of more than 2 hours are painful. The solution was to pick up some green Confor Foam (the firm stuff, since I only have room for one layer) and some surplus leather from our local surplus store, The Yard. I'm fairly sure the leather was some leftovers from a business jet interior. After many hours of hand sewing, I have a new, very comfortable seat cushion. It worked great during my long flights during the 2014 Wichita VSA regatta.

On our last day of the season, I removed the instrument panel and brought it home with me so I can install a new vario in place of the Ball audio vario that has been taking up space in the panel since I bought the glider. It has never worked correctly, so now it is being replaced with an LX16D. I am looking forward to having a functional audio vario. Most of the work will be to get it mounted in the panel and wired and plumbed, but I also have some additional plumbing to do, since the Ball vario uses pitot and static inputs, and both the currently-installed PZL vario and the new LX16D use the total energy probe. I've been told that as long as I split the line behind the seat, I'll be fine, so I'll cut and tee it, and then run another line to the cockpit. I'm also going to take the opportunity to replace the last of the original wiring in the glider, which runs between the battery box in the seat and the instrument panel.