Conduit To Tailcone & Soundproofing

Added 5/17/2005 - 547.6 Me Hours, 591.5 Total Hours

Since the Quickbuild Fuselage does not come primed under any of the panels (I think they must just spray the thing after it's assembled), I removed all of my panels (still have more to go) and primed under them.   I'm just doing a quick scuff with scotchbrite, then a wipe with MEK or Toluene, and then priming with AKZO.  Seems to be working great.

As for the soundproofing, I ordered it from Aircraft Spruce.
I got 09-42727 3/4", 09-42725 1/2", and 09-42723 3/8".....a 4' length (48" wide" of each.  This is plenty to do the floors and have a lot left for some sidewalls.  Probably not enough for the entire plane.  It's between $11.85 and $17.90/ft for those sizes.  I also bought  2 cans of 09-27415 "Sticky Stuff".

To do the cutting, I used the floor panels that go above it as a guide.  You just have to be careful to draw your lines NOT inline with the rivet lines, but with their approximate location to the real rib.  It was pretty simple.

In doing the conduit, I found some awesome stuff.  
I've been wanting to get my conduit for my wire run to the tailcone from the mid-fuse.  Then I had a brilliant idea.  I knew at work we had Inner Duct for running fiberoptic cables for the network.   Randy #006 said his .600" I.D./.700 O.D. tubing was pretty tight, (.283 sq.in. area) and bigger or dual per side would be better.  At work, they had some scrap InnerDuct with 1.05" I.D.  (.866 sq.in. area!) and it was nice and soft, very lightweight, and plenum rated/UL listed stuff.  In contrast, the blue corrugated stuff from Menards is only 3/4", and is a more brittle, stiff, and heavy plastic.  Here, there should be a LOT more volume available to pull the wires.

Here's a link:
http://www.carlon.com/Brochures/2F50-Plenum.pdf

Here's what's printed on it:
1" Carlon Pelnum-Gard CF4X 9P1222996B (UL)
"optical fiber/communication raceway" "Plenum"

There are many part numbers on this page for ordering different sized rolls.  It's not a low-quantity item, so you'd probably want to scrounge some from someone who works at some big company who has fiberoptic networking in their building. (Very common)   I'd assume ours is something like:

From this page,
http://www.fourpts.com/gsa4.html it looks like about .50cents/ft if you had to buy it, but ours was actually a small amount of scrap left over from a recent networking project....it only takes about 5' (slightly less) per side.  You'll also need a 1-1/8" unibit, and a dremel sander to enlarge the hole slightly from that...then it should pull just fine.  I also deburred the holes well with a 1" scotchbrite wheel on a die grinder.

After completing that, I went on to rivet down my front floopans.  From the earlier pictures, you may know:  Van's didn't send my floorpans with my QB fuse.  So I told them to ship me some.  They sent small hardware bag with them, with some snap bushings, nutplates, and rivets.  The only problem is, they were 8 rivets short on the CS4-4's to put down the floor, and there were no K1000-3 nutplates to put under the front legs of the gear brackets (the ones that bolt through the floorpans).  Hardware bag 1455 includes 2 K1000-3's, but you need 4 to do the floorpans.  I'm assuming the 2 that were in the bag were not even for the front floorpans, but for something else, so I'm going to request 4 more.  They're still working the bugs out on what gets shipped with these kits.

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