Once I have the air lines organized I want to make a perch for the UAT to be installed. This is part of the fuel system and therefore I would like to have it next to the fuel tank. Its purpose is to insure that the fuel that flows to the turbine fuel pump is free of air bubbles. Although there is not any real reason to have to service this item I would still like it to be removable. ( Murphy's law principal )
This is where it will go more or less so now I need to get started on a perch for it.

There are a lot of air lines to deal with and the fuse is 11.5 feet long so I try to route them as neatly as possible.
One way to do this is to run them through a tube. I like these cool tubes because they are light heat protective to 600 degrees F and go around corners. Duralite sell these tubes in different diameters and colours.
Please feel free to comment or ask any questions about anything in the Hangar Deck posts.

There is a bunch of wiring and air lines that will be routed through the plane to the nose section but before I can tidy these up I need to install the fuel tank which is like putting a square tube in a round hole. First the tank has to be plumbed and pressure tested to make sure there are no leaks.

Behind my hand and in front of the tank I will need to make a perch for the air trap which goes between the turbine and the fuel tank.

In the top picture you can also see the hydraulic system for the main gear. It needed to be bled and is now tested and works great. Unfortunately in order to get the tank in I will need to remove it. This can be accomplished without removing any of the hydraulic lines hopefully.

Another task that needs to be done well the plane is in pieces is the landing lights. The nose gear light I needed to make a bracket for to attach to the oleo and the main gear light needed to have brackets to attach them ( one on each main gear door) to the doors.You can tell by the heat sink on the end that this light will be seen on final with no problem.

The 104 from Skymaster had a design change that came out after this air frame was manufactured. There was some concern that if the linkage or servo were to fail on the leading edge flap it would cause a situation that would be unflyable and I have heard of one incidence of this occurring. So Skymaster sent out the engineering fix to all those air frames that were already sold. You can see in the picture to the right that the leading edge flap drops down and is held there by the linkage to the servo. What Skymaster came out with was a phenolic plate with the opening in it for a steel pin that was mounted in the fuse. You can see the picture of the pin that needs to be installed inside the fuse and a picture of it installed and sticking out of the fuse where the wing attaches.

This needs to be done now before the fuse gets more complicated and access becomes severely restricted.
 

Back at the CF-104

I cannot believe that it has been a year since the last post. I am kind of like the guy who goes to the store for a liter of milk and does not come back for a year!!
Anyway I am not determined to get the rigging done on this bad boy so here we go.
There are 4 main systems in this plane.

1. Electrical including the power distribution panel and servos as well as the lighting, receivers and telemetry. Also included in this would be the turbine ECU.
2. Hydraulic system which is primarily for the main gear as they are quite complicated and need the pressure that a hydraulic system provides over a pneumatic one.
3. Pneumatic system which is used to operate the nose gear and gear doors as well as chute deployment and speed brakes
4. Fuel system.   

        

                                                                             
  There are 3 main pieces the the plane not including the wings. All the wiring and the pneumatics need to be routed to just behind the pilots seat.  This part of the canopy system I have made easily removeable so access is no problem.                     

I will lay out wire harness and power distribution panel which by the way is the PowerBox Royal SRS on the bench to get an idea of what I am up against and to make sure my wire harness is long enough.

More pictures to come.