Article Type: How-To
Article Date: November 14, 2001
Welcome back folks! I know that I've been VERY remiss in my article writing, but my muse hasn't been 'musing me lately. :)
I'm going to open this edition up with pictures of Rob working on the ejection seat.
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Rob works on the ejection seat  |
Rob gets all the credit for this baby. I just drove the screw gun, took some pictures, built the handles & installed the bass shakers. :) He gets the lion's share of the credit here. If it wasn't for Rob, the seat wouldn't be nearly as good as it is.
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| Backside of ejection seat |
The seat is built from 1/2 & 5/8" plywood. The basic shape was defined by the plans that Chris Van Lierop created. You can find them here.
The design needed to be modifed a bit to work in the F-15C. The upper portion of the ACES II seat in the F-15 is very similar to that of the F-16 version, but the bottom is vastly different. For instance, the F-16 has the ejection initiator handle set in the front of the seat, right in the center. The F-15 version has two handles to either side of the seat.
The seat as finished isn't 100 percent accurate. It's more along the lines of "stand-off" scale. You won't get any better result building from wood, however.
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| Primed and puttied seat |
This is what the assembled seat looks like after the initial coat of primer. The pinkish colored spots you see is body putty. The whole seat is covered in a thin layer of a lightweight body putty. It hides the grain of the wood and gives the seat a more metallic look & feel.
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| Initiator handles made of plywood |
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| Another shot of the initiator handle |
Here is how I built the initiator handles. They're built from plywood and use a brass rod & spring to move a momentary microswitch. The wiring passes through the seat sides via a drilled channel and exit at the bottom of the seat. It was built like this to allow easy repair. If the seat handles are pulled too hard, they will break. Fortunately, I created both of them from a master pattern I made and they're easy to replace (just annoying to have to do it).
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| Almost ready for final paint and assembly |
Here's the seat prior to final paint & assembly. It looks a lot nicer now, but I don't have current pictures handy.
Here's a shot of the pan release handle. Again, this is made from plywood. The whole handle was painted silver and then a copper coat was just fogged on to it to give the bronze color of the original. Testors brand yellow and black paint add the final detail.
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| Pan release handle |
One of the things that had to be done during the conversion from fighter to simulated fighter was stripping out old gear. One of the biggest headaches that I've encountered so far has been the wiring harness. Both Rob and I are convinced that McDonnell-Douglas used child labor to install the wiring in the cockpit. There is no way a full grown adult's fingers would have fit in the places we needed to put them. In desperation, I attacked the harness with a set of bolt-cutters just to get it loose enough to maneuver.
Here you can see it draped across my other project—a 1974 Sunbug Convertible (that some knob painted red. The indignity!).
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| Wiring harness |
This harness section weighs probably 50 lbs. or so. There is a lot more but this was the only picture taken.
Next on the list was prepping the nose for the overhead projector cavity. The image below shows what the area looked like before we began working on it in earnest.
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| Rusty bit in center had to be removed to make room for projector |
The center section with the rusty/corroded section is a hardened aluminum plate a bit over 1/4" thick. A number of Sawsall blades and a pint or so of blood was devoted to removing the center section of that plate. In a word, OW!
This is a portion of what was removed:
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| Debris from projector chamber cutout |
The result, was this:
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| A terrible thing to do to an F-15, but it had to be done. |
Yes, I know it looks ugly and it's a horrible thing to do to an F-15, but the projector had to go somewhere!
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| Sharp edges and much blood later . . . |
The whole cavity is a haven for sharp edges. I wasn't kidding about the pint of blood thing. :)
After these pictures were taken, the whole area was masked off and painted flat black. This is done to prevent any unwanted reflection within the cavity. All of the bare metal edges were covered with either a narrow diameter rubber hose, a tool handle rubber coating compound or both. The chances of filleting yourself when reaching in there has been significantly reduced.
Some testing was performed with the overhead projector and LCD panel installed. Unfortunately I don't have any images of the test. It was pretty neat though.
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| Clear lexan mounted over this future equipment bay |
The "open" area on this bay door is where the Pitot tube would be mounted. There is one on each side of the airframe. Rob has cut clear lexan covers for these holes. This will allow people to see inside the bays without having to open the doors. They'll also allow me to see any special displays or indicators I see fit to stick in there, such as voltage and temperature indicators.
So what's next? Well I recently solved a problem I was having with the flight stick centering system. I can guarantee that without a doubt, I have the only F-15C in the world that's using 1/2" galvanized steel wiring conduit for control pushrods. :)
The cockpit interior has been cleaned up and a new coat of paint has been applied. We also got the cockpit rails repainted. It's amazing how much a new coat of paint can improve the look of things!
The wiring has been completed on the throttle quadrant (see here for pics & details of that) and I hope to have it installed in the near future. Part of that process will of course involve getting the potentiometer plate made and the throttle pushrods installed. Once that is done, I'll be able to get the full complement of controls hooked up to the computer for calibration and to see what kind of repeatability error I've got on the self-centering controls.
That's all for now, and thanks for taking the time to read this!
