November 14, 2006

I got in at a reasonable time today, so I could leave a little earlier which helps. I started the evening at the hangar by removing the peel ply from the gear legs. They look pretty good. One more layer of glass on the left leg and they are done for first flight.

I finished what I started yesterday with the empennage tips. I’ll leave them like this overnight, and tomorrow I’ll rivet them to the plane. I’ll save the beautification until after we’re flying, and probably until it starts getting warmer here again!

Next I trimmed the empennage fairing to fit the empennage a little better. It really isn’t that great. I might just tape the thing down for first flight, then get the fairings etc. one. I decided to see what I could do for fit by doing some layups on to the actual plane, then epoxying the fairing to the new layups. I put some electrical tape down, and coated it with some PVA release stuff.

Then I laid up some pieces of glass around the front of the HS to form a hook for the front of the fairing, and I ran fibreglass tape along the rest of the HS and VS to give me something to bond the fairing too. I’m not sure how well this will work, but I know Mike did it once and it seemed to turn out OK. I put some peel ply over the whole lot and left it. Tomorrow we’ll have a look and see if we can bond the fairing to it all. If it doesn’t work, then it’s out with the duct tape!