February 17, 2021
With my inspection scheduled for Tuesday I am working long hours and on the items that affect airworthiness. Fancy interior and other bells and whistles will have to wait. I finished the last of the heavy lifting for sanding, woohoo! So today’s three hours of sanding included; pilot door sill and surround, the inside cabin top, and left wing tip…
February 13, 2021
I bit the bullet and sanded the windshield surround fiberglass. That was a three hour project, but it looks pretty good and will certainly keep the windshield from departing the aircraft. Whew, happy to have that checked off. Then it was time for more sanding, this time sanding on the co-pilot door sill I epoxied yesterday. It turned out well,…
February 12, 2021
I finished up the co-pilot door strut. Then made some adjustments to the door lock blocks, sprayed some silicon and bam the doors open, close, and lock perfectly. Then it was on to floxing in the carbon fiber door sill. Once that was clamped down I added a nice edge and filler to the rest of the door opening and…
February 11, 2021
I knocked out the major sanding in a couple hours on the pilot door. Getting the door lock blocks mounted and operational was definitely much faster today. However, the sanding for the McMaster door seal took forever. Eight times I would sand to a gap I thought would be good, vacuum, apply the door seal, close the door, and check…
February 10, 2021
Blerg, what a day. I learned a lot about making the doors fit tight and have a proper gap. So that will be helpful tomorrow when I finish the pilot door. As mentioned in the title, I spent the entire day working on the co-pilot door. First I had to get the door lock blocks located and mounted. But before…
February 9, 2021
Huge day! Cross off the first engine start. Boy did that feel great to have an near instant start and for her to run so smooth. Whew. Backing up, I started with installing the fuel tank vents, attaching the rudder cables to the rudder, and attaching the yaw damper cables. This is was engine prep time; flush both fuel lines,…
February 8, 2021
Guess what. I started the day with sanding. Knocked out of outside of both doors and lots of sanding on the windshield. Hours upon hours of bliss. Later in the day I put on, what I hope is the final fiberglass layer on the windshield. After sanding I’ll make a final determination. The big excitement for the day was getting…
January 28, 2021
Guess who started the day with sanding? And who finished the day with sanding? This guy. But the sun visor blocks are installed and the flox/micro turned out well. From there it was on to the cowling which needed nutplates installed and since we were on nutplates, why not install them on the spinner bulkheads. I still have all the…
January 27, 2021
The ignition cables are now better organized with spacers between to ensure no cross firing. Got the screws installed in the tail fairing, which turned into more work than I expected. Well there were two nutplates involved… Before the window installed I needed to get the sunvisors mounted. With the doors on I could find the best location and then…
January 26, 2021
Whew, big day with lots of progress. Kicked it off with cutting holes for the defrost fans in the glaresheild. Friday is hopefully the day to install windows and it needed to be done before then. Then it was on to fabricating the door lock brackets. Not too difficult but one has an odd bend to match the door that…
January 25, 2021
So with some effort the door clecos/tape that was installed for curing the epoxy to seal the halves were removed and the doors were ready to have the mechanics installed. This was a bitch of a project. Specifically getting the long tube/pin into the 3rd door latch gear. Wow, who would think you could spend hours dealing with that. Took…
January 21, 2021
Big project today, getting the doors halves glued together. The prep involved drilling for more clecos, sanding (this seems never ending), mixing up lots of epoxy, flox, and taping off the fuselage. The actual gluing and affixing the doors to the didn’t take a ton of time. Lots of clecos and clamps to hold things in place. As there seemed…