Quad City Challenger ultralight building tips

 L'il Hustler's Ultralight Store
92 River Road PO Box 1710
Holland Landing Ontario Canada
L9N 1P2          647-723-8767

Airfield
1895 10th line east of Hwy 11
Bradford Ontario

Click here to go to the
ULTRALIGHT STORE

The L'il Buzzard ultralight trainer.

Top 10 reasons to consider a
 L'il Buzzard! 
 

 Click here for this months specials!

 

When was the last time you did maintenance on your K & N Airfilter? Is you filter safety wired? Click here to see how to clean and safety wire your airfilter!

Some building tips for the Quad City Challenger.

Challenger Builder's Corner

The following photos and ideas are purely our own. It works for us but you are ultimately responsible for the work and applicability to your plane.

Quad City Challenger battery boxThis battery box is built with aluminum angle. You need to heat the aluminum and bend slowly to avoid cracking or breakage. This installation only works if you are installing the fiberglass nosecone as the battery box sits slightly outside the framework. This position is really accessible.

Note the aluminum sheeting attached to the inside left of the fuselage. This is where the buss bar is mounted. We use wire wrap around all the wiring and bring it around the outside of the aluminum sheet to keep the cockpit neat. We always shoot the fuselage with primer and finish coat before covering for a nice finished appearance. The inside of the nosecone will also be painted (use a roller). You must remove paint where you will have glue surface.
   
Quad City Challenger For added strength, we use aluminum sheet to gussett the ribs to the bottom of the wing in the inboard box of the wing. We also make an additional box at the outboard (only 3-4" wide inside the last rib). We feel this  helps keep the last rib aligned and stable in the shrinking process.
 
We were in the process here of setting the hinges for the ailerons. Notice the portable sawhorses? Using PVC pipe and fittings you can make them to fit the height you desire to work at ...and disassembly and storage is easy. Make a great work space by using a sheet of plywood to bridge .

Also notice that we generally spread sheets across any surface that will contact aluminum to prevent any abrasion that would open it up to corrosion. (Visit Goodwill...sheets are cheap, corrosion isn't.)
Make yourself visible to others when your flying...... Strobe lights make you visible! Click here for more information!


In an effort to soften the scalloped appearance of the leading edge, (reduce the peaks and valleys), we run an aviation approved twill tape (1/2") in 3 strips. Actually the purpose is two-fold. It helps to support the fabric and keep it from shrinking quite so deeply between the ribs and it is glued to each rib which maintains the spacing between them during the shrink. (More later on fabricing and shrinking). We riveted and glued on the ends of the twill and spot glued on the tops with a product similar to Superglue. Superflite U-500 won't do it!
 


On to the fuselage..... We like to form around the box beneath the engine. An aluminum 'floor' is installed, aluminum formed around the tubing, and lexan used to finish enclosing the area. A cap is made to top it off (use rivnuts to attach). The forming of the area is two-fold. The aluminum allows for an excellent glue surface and it creates a great storage compartment for carrying your tool kit.
 
This particular plane is outfitted with a 12 gallon tank. Behind the tank there is a small storage compartment formed out of lexan and the same width as the fuselage. This is for oil storage.

Notice that the interior is only powder-coated in the cockpit area.

We beef up our landing gears by inserting a 6" piece of solid core aluminum in the center of the leg tubes. This has prevented many a bent landing gear due to less than perfect touchdowns.
 



Instead of a full fiberglass cap, we opted to fill in the rear portion with tinted lexan. The picture probably doesn't do it justice... up close it looks great. It provides for easy inspection during pre-flight.
The above courtesy of: http://technet.nwidt.com/~cbottjen/Frames/builder.html

Make yourself visible to others when your flying...... Strobe lights make you visible! Click here for more information!

Ultralight News
PO Box 1710
Holland Landing Ontario
L9N 1P2                 647-723-8767

Airfield
1895 10th line east of Hwy 11
Bradford Ontario 

Google

Web Ultralight News.com
Ultralight News.ca Ultralight Flyer.com

Ultralight Aircraft News Web Magazine PO Box 1710 Holland Landing Ontario Canada  L9N 1P2 647-723-8767. You may link to these pages or print them out for your own personal use, but no part of this publication may be copied or distributed, transmitted, transcribed, stored in a retrieval system, or translated into any human or computer language, in any form or by any means, electronic,  mechanical, manual, or otherwise,  without the written permission of Ultralight News. By copying or paraphrasing the intellectual property on this site, you're automatically signing a binding contract and agreeing to be billed $10,000 payable immediately. Copyright Ultralight News -  Ultralight Flyer.  
Return to Main Index for this section