With the major painting on the bird complete, I got to work inside the hell hole to finish off the final oil heat hoses and fuel line connections.

I also tightened up the bushing securing the mixture cable into the firewall.

When I originally ran the oil heat feed hose I had not yet installed the mixture cable, which of course crosses —and touches— the oil heat feed hose.  To ensure no issues with vibration between the two, I wrapped a piece of engine baffle seal material around the oil hose, secured it with zip ties, and then used waxed cord to secure it to the mixture cable.

I then spent a little bit reacquainting myself with the automatic gear extension (AEX) LIDAR (laser altimeter) before installing it to its forward mounting tab inside the hell hole.

I then secured all its wiring to ensure nothing was vibrating or flopping freely around.

I ordered some filter material for both the front (pilot) and aft (GIB) fresh air vents to prevent any bugs, etc. from unexpectedly entering the cockpit.  Since I’ll be flying for most likely 2-3 months before I have a passenger in the back seat I’m waiting to install that filter.

I cut and installed it into the front fresh air vent (pic 1) and then re-installed the fresh air eyeball vent (pic 2).

I then got to work on the left wing’s video camera mounting holes on the outboard end.  The aft hole cleaned up fine and I installed a screw to test it out.

But the front hole needed to be tapped to clean it out.

Here is the just-tapped front video camera mounting hole on the left wing.

At which point I test-installed a screw into it to check it out… here’s a couple pics of that.

It was getting late, but I was curious to find a StarLink antenna location, if possible.

Both strake baggage compartments are a no-go, since I have carbon fiber inlaid on the top side of the left strake, and an O2 bottle in the right strake.

I tried putting the 3D printed antenna mockup into the nose substructure opening but quickly found out that in order to install or remove it that I would have to remove at least a couple instruments every time, which negates the entire purpose of that opening.

I then placed the antenna in the nose, just forward of the canard.  After a bit of finagling and assessing, I determined that this was the spot.  I can get it installed and removed with just a bit of minor fiddling, and it has good satellite exposure… so this is the place it will be going.

And with that, I called it a night.