Before I flip this bird back upright I need to make a lightweight faceplate to attach to the front of the taxi light to cover the gap between it and its pocket in the nose.  Besides the aesthetics of how the taxi light sits in this nose pocket, I’m also concerned about air leaking around it and both causing the fuselage to be drafty, and causing drag.

Here’s a side view of the current taxi light front face.

I taped up the current taxi light face separately than the surrounding nose, since I wanted to capture the current gap with the 2-ply BID layup.

Which I did here.  I then peel plied the layup.

Another shot of the soon-to-be new taxi light front face 2-ply BID layup.

I then marked the outline with a Sharpie of the current taxi light opening in the nose.

A bit later, after I had identified and taped a few more spots requiring blue touch up paint, I sanded and prepped the taxi light opening for paint.

And then painted it, along with extending bits of blue on each side of the nose gear strut well towards the very top of where the nose gear fairing rests in the closed position … since there were still scant traces of white showing on the edges when it was closed.

I also touched up the inside edges of the laser altimeter openings in the hell hole with blue paint, as well as sanded and touched up the perimeter edges of the nose gear strut fairing.

I then swapped out the wing bolts for longer ones to allow me to attach the half-moon assemblies to flip the bird upright.

If all goes well, including weather, I plan on flipping the fuselage back upright tomorrow.

I have literally 2 tasks left to complete before flipping the bird back upright.

The first is to clean the blue paint off the drop-down taxi light bracket, then tape up both the bracket and the surrounding nose for a 2-ply BID layup.  Later, I’ll trim & attach the cured layup to the taxi light and work it into the current opening in the nose to better seal the gap around the taxi light when seated in the nose hole.

Secondly, I will tape the edge of the black stripe with fine line tape to allow me to avoid having to climb underneath the plane later on to tape up the current paint before shooting the remaining paint.

In addition, I made a video to provide a wrap-up/overview of all my bottom-side plane shenanigans before I flip the bird back upright:

Let’s talk paint starting off.  In reviewing some past posts to see where I was before I jumped back in on this blog, I noted that I had communicated how not happy I was with the current 2-part polyurethane boat paint.  Again, it looks great from 6-10 feet away, but upon closer inspection it shows the inherent dust of this shop, and some irregularities in the application.  As I’ve recently mentioned, I’m calling it good for the bottom of the plane and rear fuselage sides, but no more than that.  I’m willing to live with those areas not having the greatest paint, but definitely not the topside (aka “most visible”) of the plane.

One day while down at my local NAPA auto parts store, picking up some painting supplies, I overheard the paint tech talking on speaker phone to an older gentleman who was restoring a vintage pickup truck.  The customer couldn’t find a color code anywhere and was perplexed on how to get the right color, given that he had a couple of parts with the original color.  Somewhat serendipitously, I overheard the NAPA paint guy tell the man on the phone that this particular NAPA store apparently had a phenomenal color matching system for auto paint.

A month or so later, after I had expended all efforts in salvaging my boat paint system in trying to make it work, I recalled that conversation and went back to NAPA —with my blue painted nose hatch cover in hand—to learn what options I had.  I had never hear of “nason” paint before, but I was shown where it had won the contract as the paint for the Marine One Presidential V-22 Ospreys.  We also got a very knowledgeable company rep on the phone and I discussed with him at length my requirements. Out of that discussion I was convinced that this system would meet my needs and I pulled the trigger.

Yes, I will clearly need to do some blending of the paint systems (not the actual paint, but on the bird) and masking off of the pre-existing paint, but I think this will get me a lot closer to what I want as far as paint quality, durability and color scheme.  It better, because I have zero plans on switching systems (again!).

I started off today by taping off the perimeter of the GIB air vent NACA scoop to protect the surrounding paint, then used a razor blade and sand paper to clean up the interior of the NACA scoop… located on the bottom of the right strake, near the fuselage sidewall and just forward of the GIB strake window.

I left the interior of this NACA scoop in raw fiberglass because I need to overlap more glass onto it when I build the remainder of the scoop structure on the inside of the baggage compartment.  To mark the aft line of the scoop, I drilled a small hole in each corner, then took a broken drill bit and placed it inside the inboard hole to mark my starting point on the NACA scoop once the bird gets flipped upright.

Part of my blue touch up paint machinations included painting the remaining internal horseshoe-shaped edge of the taxi light opening.

I’ve had discussions with various builders (specifically Dave Berenholtz) on the topic of having a good sized diameter bolt or pin to allow for securing the nose of the plane with heavier weights when its needed to have the nose raised all the way up.  I talked with Marco about how he uses the nose gear actuator, but since my nose gear fairing is a bit wider than his and free-floating I felt more comfortable just putting in a simple hardpoint on the aft side of the taxi light well.

I actually used the wing bolt hole 5/8″ spot face tool to make the final hole for my brass 3/8″ bolt insert.

I taped off the interior open face of the threaded 3/8″ brass hard point, and then prepped the hole.  I used grease on a 3/8″ bolt that I placed through a taped-off (mold release) thin aluminum washer that I found in my scrap pile, in turn the bolt was threaded into the 3/8″ insert.

Since my spot face was a bit dull, the resulting hole was a bit oversized.  So I cheated and stuffed in a couple of plies of wetted out glass before slathering flox into the hole, then inserting the 3/8″ threaded insert slathered with flox as well.  As you can see below, I then wedged some small clamps into place on each side of the protruding bolt, pressed up directly against the oversized aluminum washer.

I used MGS 335 here with fast hardener, and here’s the results a few hours later.

I removed the bolt and washer and spent a good 20 minutes cleaning up the excess flox and glass around the perimeter of the 3/8″ brass insert.  I’ll sand the area after it cures fully and touch up the blue paint.

Here’s another shot of a final test fit with the 3/8″ bolt.  This particular bolt is 2-1/2″ long… clearly I could use one another inch longer, or even an eye bolt, to secure/tie off a weight to.

My final task of the evening was extracting the nearly fully cured Oxygen bottle mounting cradle sleeve, side 2, off the bottle.  This is always a fun-filled endeavor and took a bit of effort to accomplish.  Once off however, with the O₂ bottle all cleaned up, it looks like it will work just fine.  I’ll note that I’m working the O₂ bottle mounting now since once the bird is flipped back upright this will be a prerequisite task before closing out the strakes.

With that, I called it a night.

I started off this morning with my cup of coffee and some research/inventory of required hardware to connect up my external vernatherm and hopefully attach it to the engine mount.  This effort is copying Nick Ugolini’s method of eliminating the need to block off the oil cooler in the winter by adding another, external vernatherm at a point in-between the engine and oil cooler.  In a bit of irony, I had an external vernatherm on hand when I bought it to use for Nick’s original oil heat system design, that he then upgraded to a much better version later on… so I had a spare laying around.

I then finalized and pulled the trigger on an Aircraft Spruce order, that included a manifold block and Adel clamps for the motor mount to attach the various respective/individual engine sensors… in my quest to make the engine easier to install/remove as needed.

Out in the shop I finished taping up the landing light lens and various edges along the bottom of the nose and fuselage to allow me to do some touchups/additions with the blue paint.

Here we have the taped up landing light lens with the blue touchup paint applied… I went a bit rogue and touched up the upper (aft) side of the lens with a fairly dry application of paint.

I also touched up/added a bit of blue paint in and around the nose gear, including the front of the NG5 plate, extending the blue back a bit on each side of NG5 to cover up the bits of white showing when the nose gear is closed, and —going roque again!— I got risky and touched up the edges of the nose gear doors now since I had plenty of paint (even though I mixed up like 2 grams worth).  Lastly, I also did a bit of touch up on the fuselage side of the RAM air scoop, and the RAM air scoop/hell hole cover itself.

With the blue paint applied and drying, I then got busy re-taping up the Mountain High O₂ bottle in prep for laying up the second half of the composite cradle mount.

As before, I laid up 2 plies of UNI and 2 plies of BID for the second half of the O2 bottle composite cradle mount.  I then peel plied the layup.

To be clear, once I combine the two halves of the cradle mount, I will then use a hole saw to make some rather large lightening holes… this is the reason why I used 4 plies in creating the mount.

I used slow hardener and it was getting late, so I left the layup to cure overnight.