August 5, 2006

Today was the first day of Thunder Over Michigan, so the airport was very busy! I eventually got in to my hangar after moving a line of people out the way that was blocking the gate!

I went to work on wingtip stuff again. I can’t find my CF card for my camera, so it all went wrong today as far as pictures are concerned.

The wing tips are a bit flimsy in places, so I decided I would add some reinforcement foam. I cut some 1"x1"x36" pieces of urethane foam to epoxy in to the tips. First though, I had to make sure that the screw holes were clear on the left tip from when we bonded the strips on with the nutplates. I cleaned them up, chased the threads of the nutplates, and set about positioning the foam. Then I spread out some epoxy in the wingtip, put some on the foam and laid it in place. Then I put the wing tip on the plane so that the resin would set in the right position.

While that was drying, a did a bit of cleaning around, and set up all the V speeds in the EFIS One. I also cut up some bits of fibreglass to lay up on the foam, and prepared the wing tip ribs to be put in to place.

After a lot of messing around, I took the wingtip off and went to work laying up the cloth. Looks like this might work out OK. Once it’s dry, it should be pretty good reinforcement. Then I match drilled the wing tip rib, and fitted it. I put the wing tip back on the plane so it sets up correctly again.

After all that, the day was practically over. I don’t know why it took me so long, but it took me a while to get back into it after being away from theprject for so long.

I got my seatbelts from Van’s, so I put them in position to see what they looked like. More time wasting!