November 19, 2006

I was at the hangar a little longer than anticipated really today, but I made good ground. I wanted to make the cowling hinge pin retaining cover thingies today, so I got on with rolling some 1/8" thick flat bar stock. This cowling hinge thingy method is Mike’s way, so credit has to go to him. He did this on his RV-4 first, and it looks pretty nice.

I made a cardboard template of the curvature of the cowling to match. It’s a constantly tightening radius. I seem to be better at metalworking than fibreglass working…

Once the bar stock was rolled, it was just a matter of cutting the covers out. Lovely.

I put some loops in the end of the hinge pins to make them easier to get in and out….

With the ‘special tool’ number MK12425930920-2

Then I made the holes in the cowling for the covers. You can already see how they’ll look.

Then put PVA release agent on them, wax them too for good measure and flox the heck out of them. Well, you don’t have to go too mad with the flox. It’s just to make a flange for the cover to sit on. More to come on this tomorrow!

OK, back to the empennage fairing ugh thing. I peeled it off the plane, and surprisingly it didn’t turn out too bad. It’s certainly will be good enough for flight anyhow. I just need to trim it up some to make it look a little neater, and then we can call it good.

Here it is all trimed and sanded. I guess it doesn’t fit too bad. A bit of filler here and there and it might even be acceptable for ‘production’.

Well that’s it. Apart from the wiring that needs sleeving in the engine compartment, and the final cowling hinge pin chapter, this thing is ready to fly! I ordered some sleeving from McMaster-Carr, overnight shipping, so on Tuesday morning I can take care of Mike’s squarks. Tomorrow I’ll finish the cowling stuff.

Time to start cleaning up. This is the first time I’ve seen this futon thing in 4 years! It’s always been stacked with aeroplane stuff! Even the work table is clean!

Here she is, waiting patiently for the inspection.

I did some more paperwork at home this evening. All the log books are in order and the weight and balance document is done.