July 5, 2005

I spent a lot of time flying today. I got my BFR completed and out of the way. This Saturday, I’ll be flying the Diamond DA-40. Now that’ll be a little different. So, time spent flying = time not spent building. Hmmmm.

I did do a couple of things today. I started by getting Kinko’s to laserprint my artwork file a couple of times, then I set about trying to make some decals. I started off trying to make white ones. Well, Frank at Pulsar said it takes a bit of trial and error to figure it out. Making white is pretty hard, but can be done. I managed to make some half decent white decals, but ran out of prints. I only had two done. In hindsight, I should’ve done about ten! Oh well, I’ll do ’em at work tomorrow. Anyway, when you make the white decals, you start with a grey foil. These foils are really, really thin and are very difficult to keep from wrinkling as they go through the machine. Practice makes perfect…. Back to the grey foil…. It just so happens that this grey looks really good against the panel grey. I was getting excellent results with the grey foil, but the white foil is a little trickier. For some reason, it likes to stick to everything! Humidity doesn’t help. I was sat in front of an air conditioning outlet to help overcome this.

Speaking with Frank (on 8/10/05), he mentioned that using a heat gun on the decal before applying the white would help stop it sticking to other stuff. This will take all the moisture out of the paper. This is quite important, as I found moisture to be Pulsar Decal Enemy No. 1! I’ll do some tests with making white with the heat gun trick and let you know how it turned out.

So, I decided that because the grey looks so good, and the results were outstanding, that I’d make my lettering grey. Since I’d used up most of my printed sheet with experimentation, I only managed to get one label done thus far! Here it is…

Now this writing is pretty tiny. maybe 3/32 high, maybe even less. Quite pleasing results.

Since I’d run out of labeling prints, I did the glovebox door handle. I bought a set of numbered drill bits today just for the job. I needed a No. 43 for the 4-40 tapped holes for the little screws. Here is the handle in place. Looks pretty sweet!