November 16, 2006

Clayton came by to help out this evening, which kind of helped push me along some as I was facing some serious motivation problems after looking at the empennage fairing. I’m not happy with the way it turned out as the fairing didn’t really bond as well as I’d like to the stuff I’d laid up previously. I’m not really sure where to go with it at the moment, I think I’ll ask Keith what he thinks tomorrow. He’s an expert with fibreglass.

We spent our time doing other things that needed to be done ready for the inspection on Tuesday. This included cleaning up some. The hangar is a mess, and it would be prudent to show a clean, organised workspace.

I know we should have done this a long time ago, because now I had to face the discomfort of climbing all the way to the back of the fuselage to connect the seatbelt cables to their respective anchors. It’s a bit of a squeeze back there, even for a skinny bloke like me!

Clayton, being the artful photographer that he is, took a shot of my AN4 nut and bolt collection.

Once the seat belt anchor cables were in place, we could put the back panels in. I just positioned them for now. As long as they’re at the correct statoin for the CG, it should be OK for weighing. I put some screws around in a few places, but I should probably put some in all the holes for weighing, or just put them all in a box in the plane.

Here’s a pic showing the seat floors in place. You can also see that the flap motor covers are on.

Other stuff that was done…. Hmmm.. We assembled the adjuster flaps to the seat backs. We drained the fuel out of the tanks (bar 10 gallons, as I didn’t have enough fuel cans). We started making the bushings for the seatbelt attachments on the seat floor. Clayton put the access covers on the wings, and sanded the empennage tips.

Most of the interior is together now. I need to put the seat belts in, then put the seats in. I vacuumed it out too.

I took the day off work tomorrow because I don’t think the weekend will be enough. I need to get the empennage fairing figured out, and do some of the other things that are being put off until ’tomorrow’. It’s supposed to be a better day tomorrow too weatherwise, so I may run the plane again to make sure all is well.