Hey Guys,

I’m pretty much done with the micro finishing of the top forward nose, the wheel pants, and the strake lower leading edges.  What’s left to micro finish you ask? Well, that would be the outboard underside of the wings and some final spot touchups on the canard. 

To be fair, I am currently in the process of working the final fit, finish and integration of the aft nose/avionics cover with the canopy front skirt.

I am also happy to report that the engine is off the bird and I’ve started the process of making and installing the CS spar heat shields, and the forward heat shields in the wing roots.  Once these are complete, I will then move on to cut and install the Titanium firewall.

As a point of note, I am getting married at the end of this month, so my build activities will be minimal during all of May… maybe an hour or two a day tops.  

As I am getting into domestication mode in prepping my house for a ton of guests for my upcoming nuptials, I have been trying to continue to get key tasks done on the bird build as well.

I knocked down and final sanded the added micro on the both sides of the aft wheel pant tails.  I then epoxy wiped the new micro with a couple coats of West epoxy.

Although no pic, when I epoxy wiped the aft wheel pants above, I also hit the strakes lower leading edge micro fills (after final sanding) with epoxy wipes.

On the glassed spots on the inside of the aft nose cover, I razor trimmed and pulled peel ply on the previously delammed bare wood inside surface (pic 1), and did the same with a little edge cleanup on the front left corner layup (pic 2).

My goal was to get both side CS spar Clickbonds floxed/glassed in place, but it got too late too fast, so I only nugged out the final/top Clickbond on the left side.  Again, this is to secure the left wing root forward heat shield.

I plan on knocking out the pair of Clickbonds on the right side in the next day or two.

Although it took a few rounds, my final significant task was the epoxy wiping of the forward sidewalls, the avionics bay/aft nose substructure, the top forward nose, and the nose hatch perimeter lip, obviously on both sides.

And here’s a better shot of the epoxy wiped nose and nose hatch perimeter lip… again, from both sides.

My next major task will be to sand/wet sand all the epoxy wiped surfaces I’ve done over the past few days.  As I finish up the final fit and integration of the aft nose/avionics cover in relation to the canopy front skirt, I am starting in on the CS spar “outrigger/ wings” and the wing root forward heat shields, to be completed before the wings come off and flipped to finalize the micro finishing on each of those.  Since I don’t really want the firewall installed before paint, its cutting and install will come a bit later.

Still pressing forward… just in slow-mo for the next month!

I started out today using the Fein saw to trim the overhanging glass that I laid up on the aft top (not glare shield) edge of the aft nose/avionics cover, at the seam with the front edge of the canopy skirt.  I then sanded the glass smooth to match the underlying vertical micro/foam.

I then flipped the aft nose/avionics cover over and did 2 layups: one on the left inside “flap” or “wing” that wraps around the nose over towards the fuselage side.  I discovered a delam here and cut out all the offending glass, and am laying up a single ply of BID to cover the bare wood underneath (Pic 1: And yes, we’re allowed to have would in/on these planes, but we have to cover it all in fiberglass to pretend it doesn’t exist… like a bastard sibling! haha).

I also needed to do another layup on the inside of the front left corner, and then added a very small dollop of flox at the edge to allow shaping this corner to fill in the gap better between it and the canard leading edge (pic 2).

I used Pro-Set epoxy for the layups above, and when done —not surprisingly— I had a decent little bit left in my cup.  I normally use fast hardener, so to be able to casually do an entire subsequent new layup from scratch is a nice break.  Here I’ve glassed the first (lower) of the two Clickbonds on the left side CS spar that will secure the left wing root forward heat shield… which will also serve to close the gap at the opening of the channel down the length of the wing and CS spar (hot engine compartment air = no good).

I had planned on starting my task below on the left side, but with my impromptu glassing-in of the lower Clickbond, I pressed forward on the right side.  I first made up a tape template, transferred that to foamboard and then pressed it into place over the numerous Clickbonds poking out.

Over the next day or few I plan on using this foamboard template to cut the underlying piece of Fiberfrax, and also as a template in CAD to plasma cut a thin piece of overlying aluminum (the firewall will be titanium).

Pressing forward!

After adding another round of micro around the nose-side perimeter edge of the nose hatch door, today I started off spending well over an hour fine-tuning the sanding on the micro lip.  I’m considering the nose micro around the nose hatch door complete, with a caveat that minor tweaks may be required as I prime and paint these components.

On the added lower mounting Clickbond for the right rudder cable bracket, I pulled the tape and peel ply and cleaned up the layup and threads (pic 1).  I then test mounted the right rudder cable bracket to check out the threaded mounting studs (Clickbonds) on the CS spar (pic 2)… all good.

After sanding the epoxy wipes on the aft wheel pants, I discovered that there were very slight, but noticeable (especially after paint) bumps where the glass from securing the two pant halves together were rearing their ugly heads (pic 1).  These layups are from me widening the Sam James VANs wheel pants to better fit around the Long-EZ gear leg, brake and wheel (ala Wayne Hicks).  Thus, another round of micro was required on the aft end, each side, of both wheel pants (pic 2).

I had a rough patch on each strake lower leading edge that when I micro’d the aft wheel pants above, I also hit those spots on the strakes as well.  I fully expect those to be the very last of the fills on the strakes, and after sanding I will epoxy wipe the leading edge of the strakes with 2-3 coats.

I sanded down the front wheel pants and took a bit more off on the rounded nose area, on each pant, more then I was expecting too.  With these good bit of sanding breakthroughs back into raw micro, I wanted to fill some voids and re-protect the pant noses… so I epoxy wiped them again with a couple rounds of epoxy.

With the engine off, I then got to work on the wing roots.  Here on the left you can see I trimmed and sanded the left wing’s aft heat shield platenut tabs.

Over on the right wing root, I grabbed a “before” pic with the tabs marked for trimming (pic 1).  And an “after” pic with the tabs cut and sanded (pic 2).

My last job of the evening was to lay up a hard edge on the lip of the Aft nose/avionics cover where it intersects the canopy.  For whatever reason it is way low in comparison, and instead of job globbing on micro, I added a 6-ply 3/8″ wide lip to create a harder edge which I will then finish contouring in micro.  Here it is a few hours later after it was mostly cured.

I realize in my recent banterings on what I need to finish I left out the aft nose/avionics cover… yes, I have a few final micro finish steps I need to do on this as well.

A reminder that tomorrow is my last full day of work on the build until June.  I’ll probably post about every 3-4 days since I’m limiting myself to only 1-2 hours a day on the build.

Over the past few days I’ve continued my unwavering love of sanding in numerous areas: on the nose and nose hatch, on the strake bottom leading edges (very minor fills left), and the wheel pants.

I’m happy to report I’m about done with all these components, and then it will be on to the bottom outboard of the wings and canard contour tweaks.  With these last two, that will complete the micro finishing of this bird.  Primer and paint after that.

On the front wheel pants I finished some minor fills on the top and sides (pic 1), with a good major fill on the bottom just forward of the wheel opening (pic 2).  After a good final sanding I then epoxy wiped the wheel pants with 2 coats of West epoxy.

On Friday and today (Sunday) I had my friend’s daughter (aka “my little buddy”) come over during her last days of spring break (her call!) to help clean the shop.  Not surprisingly, with all the micro sanding the last 6 months, just about every single thing in the shop has a layer of dust on it.

We started in the left-most bay and pulled out all the tools, equipment… everything.  She blew them off with the air hose, brushed them off with a foxtail and wiped them down as I cleaned the doors, walls, and even ceiling of micro dust.  Then a good sweep before all the clean stuff came back inside.

All in all, we spent about 8 hours total cleaning.

Part of that time was a good hour+ cleaning up the plasma cutting table since it will be getting a good workout in the near future cutting the forward heat shields, center section spar “outrigger” covers, and the firewall of course.

Later this evening I pulled the engine off the bird, and blocked the engine hoist with a 2×4 positive block to ensure the engine doesn’t end up on the shop floor in the wee hours of the morning.  I’ll note the engine will get its thorough cleaning as well in due time.

I then did a decent initial cleanup of the copious amounts of micro dust all over the firewall area and wing roots.

A layup task on my list was to add another Clickbond mounting point to the right rudder cable bracket.  The left side has an Adel clamp near the outboard end that keeps it in place, but this right side is flying solo with no help.  Thus, to keep the bracket from pivoting with only one attach point, I’m adding this bottom attach point to keep it solidly in place during rudder cable/brake deployment.

I’m pressing forward with theses arts ‘n crafts games that is micro finishing, and when that is over I expect my build output to increase significantly.  I will note the major detractor to said build output is my wedding upcoming in a month.  So 1 May is my no-kidding target swap between airplane build to getting the house in order and prepping for my wedding.  I will be doing single tasks, but I expect only those that take an hour or two per day to complete.

Today I focused all on micro finishing on this bird, primarily the Big 3 areas that I have in my sights to finish up: the strakes’ lower leading edges, the wheel pants and the nose.

After these 3 are ready for primer and paint, that only leaves some fine tuning on the canard and the complete start-to-finish micro finishing on the outboard 3′-ish underside of each wing and inboard bottom winglet to complete ALL the micro finishing on this bird (not counting my baggage pods, which my buddy Shane Banquer currently has in his possession to make molds in his quest to make carbon fiber pods).

While I had the right wheel pant all buttoned up in my checking the mounting apron’s new aft outboard 10-32 countersunk screws (vs series 2000 CAMLOCs), I finalized the judicious sanding of the front/aft seams on the top, inboard and outboard surfaces.  With that sanding complete, the aft wheel pant was ready for primer and paint, with only a pair of series 4000 CAMLOC receptacles on the inboard aft apron flange (see below) to completely finish off the install.

The same followed suite on the left side wheel pant as well.

What I hadn’t accomplished yet on the front of each wheel pant “half,” since they’ve both been installed this whole time, is the micro’ing of the bottom center area just forward of the wheel.  I accomplished this by removing the wheel pant front halves, taking them outside and aggressively sanding them before slathering them up with a final (hopefully) round of micro.

I had already sanded the STRAKE lower leading edges from the last round of micro adds, and all looked good except for one small trough a few inches each side of the fuel check valve on the left side, and a rather significant single divot on the right side.  I waited to fill these areas with micro until I whipped some up for the front wheel pant “halves” above.

As for the aft wheel pants, although still in need of a pair of CAMLOC receptacles for each side, I went ahead and epoxy wiped them with 2 coats of West epoxy.

Earlier in the day I did a near complete final sanding of the top nose micro, with the only strip left to do being the immediate perimeter around the nose hatch door.

My last build act of the evening was to transfer my green tape internal perimeter nose hatch door seal templates to the 1/16″ foam rubber seal that was just delivered yesterday.  Unlike on the 1/8″ seal, this time around I actual peeled off the backing to expose the adhesive side and installed the seal (yes, pre-testing… my educated guess was that it’d work!).

I then mounted the nose hatch door, closed it with the lock latch holding firm, and then popped it open again.  And I tried this a few times to confirm its functional operation. Voila… success!

I’ll note that I’m leaving the green template tape in place until after I paint the external face of the nose hatch door.

I then spent a good 45 minutes sanding the nose hatch perimeter edge down to match the level of the closed/secured nose hatch door… and re-blended the lowered edge with the surrounding nose micro.

I still have to clean up the internal edge walls of the nose hatch door lip on the nose side, as well as pretty much the same with the interfacing nose-side lip with the aft nose/avionics cover.  Once those lip edges are clean and gaps are good I’ll be ready to epoxy wipe the nose micro.

Another 2-day post here…

I started out this morning (Day 1 after putting the plane in the grazing position) by filling in the major divots of the micro fill on the nose.

Jumping ahead to today (day 2) of this post, here is the nose with yet another minor round of micro-fills and of course the requisite sanding that goes along with that.  I just received the 1/16″ thick foam rubber seal for the nose hatch door and will install that and test it out tomorrow.

It’s hard to get a shot from below since the shop lights tend to wash out the pics, but I also did two rounds of sanding and micro fills on the strake bottom leading edges, both left and right sides.  I am very close to finalizing that as well with just a few minor micro fills on each side.

As I’ve also noted over the past few days, I decided to pull the 2000 series CAMLOCs from the aft 4 hardware positions that secure each aft wheel pant to the gear leg pant apron.

In doing so, I moved the #3 screw aft on the left side outboard just a bit more for both clearance reasons and aesthetics, which meant I first had to fill the existing hole with flox (pic 1).  I then drilled a new hole further outboard and finished installing the K1000-3 platenut on the wheel pant, to secure the countersunk 10-32 screw (pic 2).

Here we have the same thing on the right side, with K1000-3 platenuts installed in the aft wheel paint at the outboard aft 2 positions on the gear leg pant apron.  My current plan is to mount standard 4000 series CAMLOCs on the inboard positions on both wheel pants, to decrease the amount of time and energy it takes to remove the aft wheel pant to check and/or add air to the tire.

I also did a good bit of sanding and a bit more micro fill work on both left and right wheel pants as well.

I’ve been trying to get to a good point to remove the engine, but since I did pretty much my last power sanding of micro inside the shop (more to come outside the shop!), I decided to hold off on the engine removal and instead take down all the plastic sheeting that was supposed to protect the shop from micro dust (it may have helped, but there is still dust literally everywhere!).  I still have one small sheet of plastic up next to the nose of the plane, which I’ll remove tomorrow after another round or two of sanding nose micro.

Pressing forward!

I started off today by taking the left elevator outside the shop to wet sand it with 150 grit. I am happy to report that it is now ready for primer and paint.

Then, having made my decision to swap out the aft 4 CAMLOCs on each wheel pant apron with 10-32 screws and higher strength CAMLOCs, I took a little bit of time to drill out the rivets to remove the 2000 series CAMLOC receptacles from the aft wheel pants.

I then removed the top cowling and epoxy wiped the inside surface with 2 coats of Hi-temp resin (HTR-212).

I then spent a good hour prepping, organizing and cleaning up the shop to allow me to put the bird in the grazing position for the first time —with the wings and engine installed.

I installed the battery in the nose, hooked it up, and then put the bird in the grazing position, which I captured in the video below.

I then grabbed a number of pics of the bird in the grazing position.

I’ll note here that the nose is sitting on its rubber bumper.

I set up a fan behind the canard blowing towards the nose and out of the shop.  I then loaded up a 40 grit disc on my orbital sander to do the initial sanding of the nose micro, knocking down the major high spots.

Here’s a couple more shots of the initial sanding on the nose micro.

I then used my 36-grit sanding board to block sand the nose micro a good bit more.

A wider angle shot of the bird in the grazing position with the nose micro sanded.

And a final shot of the sanded nose with the bird in the grazing position.

Again, I ordered some 1/16″ thick foam rubber seal for the nose hatch door, and once that arrives I can install it and then finish the final sanding of the nose and nose hatch perimeter to ensure that seam is even, level and tight.  Tomorrow I also plan on filling the numerous divots in the micro that I missed on my initial nose micro’ing effort.

Today ended up being primarily about working on the wheel pants and a good bit on getting the nose hatch door to latch with the added micro.

That being said, I started off by wet sanding the right elevator, after which I discovered a couple of rough spots on the top trailing edge.  So I added small dollops of micro to those spots.

I then took the right aft wheel pant outside to knock down the upper and lower micro areas I applied yesterday with my orbital & pad sanders.  I then taped up the seam edge of the forward pant half and the gear leg attach apron before reinstalling the right aft wheel pant (pic 1).

I then whipped up some more micro and applied it to the middle area between the upper and lower micro areas on the inboard side… obviously the aft was a bit lower here as compared to the forward wheel pant (pic 2).

I also added a bunch more micro to both the front and aft halves of the right wheel pant on the outboard areas… slowly getting everything leveled out on these wheel pants.

On the left wheel pant, I removed the aft half, took it outside and knocked down the micro I had slathered up on it a few days ago.  I then remounted the aft left wheel pant and finalized the sanding by hand with it in place.  The front still needs a little bit more micro, which I’ll apply the next time mix some up.

I then unexpectedly spent about 2 hours assessing the fit of the nose hatch door into the newly micro’d top nose.  I did a deep dive on determining why my 1/8″ seal was not working, and ended removing all of it one segment at a time.

With no seal on I still wasn’t getting the nose hatch door setting in place well enough for me to get the lock to actually latch… now, it would appear to be closed and latched, but if I pulled on the edge with my fingernail or a flat blade, the hatch door would pop open. Not good.

I’ve noticed that as the latch grabs the catch on the door side, it very slightly pivots towards the right.  Clearly the only thing that changed with the nose hatch door configuration was the added micro to the nose.  So, based on my hypothesis, I very slowly started to sand around the perimeter edge of the micro, focusing on the right side and specifically the right aft corner.

After about half an hour of slowly removing more of the micro edge around the nose hatch door, I finally got it to latch.

I then started to slowly add in the 1/8″ thick seal around the inside edge, but it’s simply too thick.  So I called it a night, went inside the house and ordered the same edge seal, only 1/16″ thick.  It will arrive in the next 2-3 days.

Back on the wheel pants for just a bit: I’ve been pondering and finally made the decision to pull the four (4) 2000 series CAMLOCs off the aft of each gear leg wheel pant apron and replace those with screws on the outboard side, and 4000 series (standard) CAMLOCs on the inboard side.  Over the next week I’ll start removing the 2000 series CAMLOC receptacles and slowly swap those out.

Again, still pressing forward… slowly but surely!

Since I couldn’t get the nose hatch door to latch into place last night before microing up the majority of the nose, my goal today was to definitely finish the micro application job on the nose.

Thus, I pulled the tape that secured the very aft edge of the nose hatch door as close to fully closed as possible, and then spent another half an hour carefully cutting and sanding the micro away from the edge of the nose hatch door to allow it to open freely.

Once the nose hatch door opened freely I removed quite a bit of tape from the foam seal to see if I could then get the door to lock close.  It didn’t (So yes, I probably could have waited to free the door, which may have allowed me not to go “weighted”… ahem!).  To keep the door closed while I micro’d the previously taped swath on each side, I then added a couple of heavy weights onto the door to keep it pressed as firmly closed as possible.

I then whipped up some micro and slathered it into the unmicro’d swaths from the door securing tape from last night.

At this point I can officially declare that the nose is in fact micro’d up!  Now all that’s needed is a bunch more sanding. Yay!

While the newly added micro on the nose cured, I went ahead and knocked out a sideline task of epoxy wiping the inside surface of the bottom cowling.  I had wholly expected to apply 2-3 coats, but after applying the first epoxy wipe I called it good.

You see, the reason why I’m epoxy wiping the inside of the cowling is twofold:
1st, I want to be able to more easily clean up any oil or liquids that come in contact with the cowling, without them soaking into the weave of the carbon fiber.
2nd, I want a smoother surface to apply my heat shields to under the exhaust pipes.  And since I had to rebuild the back half of the cowling (where the exhaust pipes are located) AND I peel plied my layups, one epoxy wipe seemed to do the trick just fine.

I also expected to get to wet sanding the elevators with 150 grit sand paper, but after doing the initial dry sanding with 120 grit on both elevators (almost 1.5 hours) I had had enough of sanding so I’ll do the wet sanding tomorrow.  Moreover, I need to fill a couple slight divots on the left elevator, so I did that and left it to cure overnight.

Back on the nose, I sanded the intersection at the aft nose/avionics cover new front lip and the aft area of the micro’d nose.  I also used my razor knife to carefully cut along the front of the aft nose cover front lip to free it from the nose micro.

I then pulled all the tape off the front lip of the aft nose cover.  Here it is open, with a shot from the aft side of the new micro lip on the nose.

And here’s a shot of the same from the front side.  I’ll note that there is just enough clearance for the front nose hatch door to be opened while the aft nose cover is fully opened.

With the tape off the front lip of the aft nose cover, I then snapped it back down into the closed position and grabbed a shot of the intersection between it and the new nose micro.

And of course we need a shot of the newly micro’d nose, which obviously needs to be sanded to a “pleasing’ shape at this point.

And one final shot of the freshly micro’d nose with the nose hatch door open.  Note the green tape which I used as my template, and is currently attached to the nose hatch door perimeter foam gap seal.

As I mentioned before, with the significantly less amount of tape remaining on the door seal (after I removed the duct tape and blue painters tape) it is still NOT latching closed.  The 1/8″ thick seal all around the entire perimeter is not allowing the door to close and latch… so I’m pulling the trigger on the same seal, only 1/16″ thick.  I’m thinking the front edge, front corners and aft middle segments will be 1/16″ thick, while the sides and aft corners will be the 1/8″ seal.  We’ll see and assess further in few days.

It was getting late, so I called it a night.  I’ll continue on with my micro finishing shenanigans tomorrow.