Rui

This can be changed by opening up the thermostat and finding a little set screw that limits the travel of the bimetalic temp sensor. I use one of these to keep my epoxy pump box at 105F.

An alternative to sleeves is the strechy part of worn out tube socks. Just cut off the foot part. This way you don't need to use masking tape to seal around the wrists. Also since I only wear a T-shirt when working, they protect my forearms from the occasional epoxy drips.

Would placing the canard lower than the main wing increase the efficiency of the system?

My experience with the MD-RA has been that the admin sucks (3 consecutive scheduling snafus causing a 3 month wait for my first inspection), but the inspector was great (a homebuilder, aircraft mechanic, AND Westjet pilot). My only small complaint about him is that he wasn't as familiar with composite construction as I thought he should be. I hear that MANY other builders have had similar experiences with the admin. My advice is to keep on them and call back at least every week if you are waiting for them to set up and inspection.

Send a message to Flyclassic@aol.com and ask for the plans. They are 50 $US (I just sent away for mine).

Speaking of turbo oil returns. A while ago I owned a turbo Chrysler LeBaron that had a leak from the oil return gasket. I tried fixing this a couple of times, but both failed, I just let it leak. Anyway, the return was a good 3/8-1/2. The feed, as I remember was much smaller, maybe 1/4.... So the above advice makes sense. btw, that Chrysler was the reason I swore to never buy another North American car again. I've been very happy with my Honda in the 7 years I've owned since trading in that piece of junk Chrysler... The turbo however, seemed to be really good quality. I think it was a Garrett.

John, When you get the chance, can you try putting in some avgas and see how the probes respond?

I just got my set of Atkinson sight gauges. I had always planned on putting them in there. I totally agree with with being able to see the fuel. I'm just questioning my initial decision to use capacitive probes. seems like the old float types are the best for my situtation. I'm also planning on using the Blue Mountain EFIS (already starting saving up for this sucker....) and I like the way that it measures fuel by you telling it how much you have on takeoff and then it keeps track of how much you have used during the flight to get the amount remaining. So it looks like I'll have 3 ways of telling how much fuel I have in my plane, EFIS, probes, sight gauges. If I ever run out it will be a truly boneheaded mistake!!

After reading your experience a couple of questions came to mind. First, how good is the stock Mazda turbo? Would some of the high priced turbos from somebody like Turbonetics be worth the extra money if they were more reliable? I'm not an expert, but is seems to me that a turbine that spins at 100,000 RPM is the last thing you would want welded, but maybe all turbos are made this way. Second, would it make sense to separate the turbo oil and coolant supplies from the critical engine systems. Similar to how some people are thinking of separating the cabin heat water/oil circuits? While an hour should be plenty of time to find an airport there may be circumstances where a failure will cause a larger leak giving you much less time.

What if the fuel used changes? Dave said that his are dual calibration which I understand to mean that they can be calibrated for 100% avgas and 100% mogas. My question is what do you do when you have a mixture of 50% avgas/50% mogas? If you had 1/2 a tank of such a mixture on one of the calibrations it would under read, on the other it would over read. Of course 50/50 mixture is just one mixture ratio, the possiblities are endless. If the probes are able to auto-adjust for the current fuel ratio then thats great, problem solved. If not.... I realize that these are great if you plan on only ever using one type of fuel, but I plan on using a rotary and mogas most of the time and avgas when its not avialable. Even with a dual calibrated system I would have to empty the tank totally to get 100% avgas so that the probes read correctly using the avgas calibration tables. As I said these are my assumptions, I have never actually tested any of this and was wondering if anybody else had and what they found.

Any idea what happens when you mix fuels? ie. half tank of 50% avgas/50% mogas? It seems to me that in this situation on one setting you would show empty and on the other you would show full. Have you tested this? I'm loath to use float probes, but capacitance probes seem to have their own problems for the person planning on using mogas from their home field, but avgas when at other fields. Granted, in most cases you would have "mostly" either avgas or mogas but it still may cause a problem. I can see the situation where the pilot want to get his tanks empty so that when he refills he doesn't have this problem and then some delay causes him to run out of fuel. Its a one in a 1000 thing, but from my reading of accident reports, it's stuff like this that often bites you. I guess the best solution is to use a fuel flow system and keep track of the fuel this way when you suspect the guages to be showing bad data.

In this same vein, and hopefully not changing the subject of the thread too much, I'd like to ask whether anybody who has used capacitive probes has had problems when switching between mogas and avgas? I was reading some old Canard Pusher articles on ez.org and saw a story about having problems with the probes reading too low when avgas was used because it has different electrical qualities. It was a rather old story so things may have improved since then, but the author recommended float type probles.

One point about keeping the levels low. This is what is recommended by MGS. When I was talking to them about crystallization issues they recommended storing both the resin and the hardener in the sealed containers as much as possible. Due to some miscommunication they thought that I had left some hardener in the pump for 6 months without using it. This possibility concerned them greatly. They recommended only putting the amount needed for a session in the pump. I think this is overly cautious, but it still makes good sense to keep only 3-4 sessions supply in the pump (ie. what you can reasonably use in a couple of weeks or so).

I suppose you could suck it up with something like a turkey baster.... Up until now (chap 5, just before the big inside layup) I have been using all fast hardener. It has been OK, but I found the seatback to be about the largest part I want to be using all fast on. For the sides I've ordered 4 litres of slow and will mix it 25% /75% slow/fast. Also its getting warmer around here and I can see using this ratio for the summer. Actually I'm glad I ordered all fast to start with. It has made me efficient in doing lay ups. I don't sweat it if my fibers are exactly 45 degrees, or try to make everything perfect. Not that I haven't made mistakes, but I treat them as learning experiences.

Speaking of canopy mods.... To those of you who have ever been in the back seat of a cozy, have you ever wished for a skylight (ie. a plexiglass window on the roof)? All of the pictures I've seen have made it seem pretty dark an claustrophobic back there.

I used some Baltic Birch plywood for the temp firewall. It's available from a local supplier called Windsor Plywood. You may find such a supplier in your area. Actually Trevor Howard recommended this to me. It is flat and smooth unlike the crap you get at HD and other such places. As for the thermostat I used the 90 degree baseboard heater types and turned the adjustment screw. Its shipped with some sort of loctite type material with the factory setting, but its easy break the lock.

Well I guess I should publicly join the club of Cozy building sofware developers. I work for a small company in the industrial automation field. Actually, when I started we were part of HP, but that changed with the Agilent split.

I built my cabinet ~48" wide. I had the room and didn't see the point of cutting a perfectly good piece of plywood. Did the same as everybody else with the folding leg on the front that drops down to form the table. I used OSB for the cover/table (some scrap that I had lying around) and found that I had trouble with the cloth catching on the wood chips. To fix this I bought some of the peel and stick vinyl flooring tiles. The cheapest, whitest I could find at Home Depot. I think they were 60 cents a piece. I covered the table with this and it has been a great cutting surface for the rotary cutters. It is almost as good as the self healing mat I bought on the same day. If I knew it was as good as it is I would have skipped buying the self-healing mat. One final tip. I've used plastic peel ply for all of my layups so far. I get it in rolls that are 52" wide. Too wide for the cabinet, so I cut off one end with the Fien tool (will the uses of this little wonder tool end???). This gave me a roll of plastic about 6" wide that is PERFECT for doing BID tapes.

OK, back to the thread. I actually like plastic peel ply. Maybe shorten it to plastic ply. I'm not too fond of pressure bagging because you don't use a bag. Seems to me that this is even more misleading then plastic peel ply.

Yes, I am using plastic peel ply for all these bulkhead layups. I like the way the part turns out. Its also nice to squegee on at the end og the layup. The main thing is the exprience factor. I find that I really learn only by making mistakes. I can read all I want, but until I actually screw up and see the consequences I don't really know it. I know others are much better at reading something and "getting" it. Unfortunately I'm not one of those.

While its not that hard, it is an adventure to those who have never seen it done before (ie. me). I am well on my way and feel pretty comfortable with the flat layups I've been doing for the bulkheads so far. But I've just gotten to the IP reinforcing ribs and it hasn't been pretty. I would like to do these over, but since no one is ever going to see them I'm not going to scrap a perfectly good IP on the count of some ragged looking work that will be hidden. I am still debating however, scrapping my front seat bulkhead. This was my first "real" layup and I think there are too many little air pockets. Heeding the mantra that says too much epoxy on the floor is better than too much epoxy on the part, I think I squegeed too hard with this peice. I now have a much better feeling for what a wet layup should look like and how much epoxy I should be using. I also have a better feeling for the amount of time I have with the epoxy. I'm using all fast hardener with MGS 285 and if you work through it at a good pace its not too bad. I think, however that I'll be ordering some slow hardener for the summer and for the large fuse sides layups. The seatback also has a pretty ragged join where the two peices of foam were glued together. I didn't sand this joint before layup so it looks pretty bad. I now know to sand all such joints to get then nice and flat before laying glass on. Another problem with the seatback is that the cloth isn't fully bonded all along the edge of the 45 degree bevel at the bottom. I didn't cut enough of the glass away before cure so some of it curled up. This is mentioned in the education section, but I'm kinda dense sometimes and don't pay attention to instructions until something like this bites me. Actually I haven't been doing the knife trimming stage at all with the layup so far. I tend to leave things the cure overnight so don't have a chance to do it. For flat bulkheads its not a problem as the foam is thin and the glass doesn't have a chance to bulge up on the edges (I've also weighed down all these layups so it can't bulge). But I can see it hapennning for other, more curvy layups. I'll just be aware of it then. All can be fixed, except for the dry layup. But I'm not sure its a dry layup in the first place. I'm going to have to get a local builder's opinion. I guess its these types of judgement calls that scares most people. It's hard to know you are doing it right until someone tells you so.

OK, thanks guys. My only concern was that it wasn't immediately appearant after cure. It was only when I put pressure on it did it "flake off". Before that it was as shiny as the rest of the layup. I suppose this is just new builder anxiety, so please bear with me. John, there are small versions of the files on there as well. Just thought that if they weren't detailed enough for you to tell you could also use the large versions.

Ok I've put a few pictures on the web http://www.ruiandjenn.ca/layupPics The best is proabaly p22500003.jpg. p2200005.jpg shows the voids where the micro didn't spread out.

Well I'm not sure if I'm using the correct term, but it looks like a piece about 1/2 inch x 1/4 inch on the underside (where it was on top of the plastic, note that this may not have anything to do with the plastic peel ply method, just my poor layup technique) came off. Basically this little area is not shiny like the rest, it is rough, and there's a chunk missing. It looks like the first ply is exposed. What I assumed happened is that when I did the strength test this is where the piece touched the edge of the 2x4 that I was using as a pivot (ie. instead of the broom handle mentioned in the plans). So this is probably where the compression force was highest. Note that in a previous post I said that my micro slurry was too thick and I can see some places where it didn't spread to on the underside (the top is well adhered to as I stippled the hell out of it to get the corners to be void-free). Maybe this caused a weak point which, when compressed caused the "flaking off" . This is a case where a picture is worth a thousand words. I'll take it off my camera tonight and mail it you if you don't mind looking at it.

I don't use wax paper. I said plastic in place of the wax paper thats called for in the plans.