September 10, 2006

More wrap up stuff today. I went and forgot my camera though, so no pics today. I’ll take some next time and post them. Doh!

My first job today was to make some little map light mounting plates. I’m using the cool LED lights available from SteinAir, but I’m mounting them under the lip above the armrests so they can’t be knocked about and broken or bent up. All will become clear when I post a picture of this! Of course these little plates needed painting, so that prompted me to do a bunch more stuff that also needed painting….

I made the front spar covers that go in front of the seats. It wasn’t a matter of just deburring these either. I had to put another bend in them at the bottom, about 3/4" up from the original bend due to the balsa sandwich floor that I put in the plane. They fit nice now. I put the plate nut on and prepped them for paint.

I also made the flap motor covers. These were easy. The last thing to make that needed paint were the side covers that run up the centre section channel. I match drilled and deburred them. They’re ready for paint.

Out comes the paint gun. You all know by now how much I hate painting. I always put it off as long as I can, I hate it so much. Anyway, I primed all the parts, so they should be ready for some paint in a day or so. They came out OK too, which is somewhat amazing.

While that was drying, I moved back inside the fuselage and started insulating the firewall. I made a template of one of the outboard lower areas, and then cut out the self adhesive foam. The template actually worked out for all the areas on the firewall practically with just a minor modification. Again, a photo would help out a lot here.

I need to sort out the alternate air control knob, but I need to order up some bits from Spruce first. I didn’t finish the firewall insulation for this reason.

I spoke with Blue Mountain last week, and I’m expecting to get our EFIS system back pretty soon. That means that we’ll soon be ready to rivet that last skin on! I still need to prep it to!