Hi Folks,

The final push to complete this Long-EZ begins . . .

The fuselage/strake/nose paint has been sanded and buffed out smooth and is looking very nice.  A few blemishes specifically due to my painting, but overall looking really good.  In the next day or two it will get ceramic coated before I pick it up and swap it out with the canopy and right wing.

I’m currently working to finish the wing vortilons which are the last of the official Long-EZ plans components that need to be installed on this bird, so I’m calling the airframe officially finished.  I also need to get these vortilons painted and mounted on the wings before the wings can be ceramic coated, since they’ll be too slick after the ceramic coating for the vortilons to attach to with RTV (talk about DRAG reduction eh?!).

Once I swap the fuselage out for the wings, and have it back in my shop, I’ll work the instrument panel and electronics install, before doing the final engine configuration and install as well.

Still a ton to do, but the light at the end of the tunnel is getting noticeably bigger!

Still pressing forward.

I figured I failed to show my 67° leading edge vortilon jigs in my last blog post, so here is one hot glued to the left leading edge with the attached vortilon glassed on the outboard side.

Speaking of the jigs, I finished printing out the third one for the right wing vortilon glassing this AM.  Here are those:

And here we have the left wing vortilons with the outboard 2-ply BID layups cured.

I then used the newly glassed outboard mounting flanges to tape the left wing vortilons in place, after I sanded the inboard surfaces and cleaned them with Acetone.

Here’s a shot looking at the ready-for-inboard-glass left wing vortilons…

As I did on the outboard vortilon layups, I prepregged the 2 plies of BID, that I cut using my templates, and then wet them out in prep for laying up.

Which I did next.  I also peel plied all 3 inboard 2-ply BID layups.

With the left wing vortilons taken care of I prepped the leading edge of the right wing, taping off the mounting areas of the 3 vortilons.  I then hot glued the 67° jigs in place centered on the appropriate B.L. distances as outlined both in the CPs and the Roncz canard plans.

After sanding the outboard vortilon surfaces, I then hot glued them to the 67° jig bottom tabs.

And as I did on the left wing, I then laid up the 2 plies of BID on the outboard sides of the right wing vortilons… note that this pic was many hours later after the glass had mostly cured and I razor trimmed the layups.

As I did on the left vortilons as well.

I then left the completely glassed left wing vortilons and the outboard glassed right wing vortilons to cure overnight.

This post covers the past few days, where I’ve been doing a little bit of everything on the bird.

To start off, I did some research online, aircraft/canard forums, etc. to find the best way to secure the GIB headrest pad to the headrest/electronics cover.  I also called Oregon Aero to see what they had to say.  Of course I had some thoughts on how I thought I would do it, and I pretty much just ended up doing that… as everyone seems to be in agreement, since this isn’t rocket science.

My plan was and is to slide a piece of aluminum, phenolic or carbon fiber onto the back side of the headrest pad, inside the leather cover.  With platenuts on the substrate I would then simply screw the headrest pad to the headrest cover.

Here is my paper outline of the back of the headrest pad.

Why not just use the velcro that is already attached you might ask?  Well, because it causes the headrest pad to stick out way too much from the headrest cover.  I want it attached nice and tight with no daylight or “sagging” going on.

With my paper template above, I then transferred that into CAD.  Here is my internal securing frame that I plan on plasma cutting to put inside the pad to secure to the cover.  My thinking was that 0.04″ 6061 would be good for this, but alas, I only have that in 2024… which doesn’t plasma cut.  My other option would 0.032″ (too flimsy) or 0.063″ (a bit thick, but should work).

I previously discussed my missing ground wire for the B&C SD-8 backup alternator, which I put the appropriate resistor for that on order and received it (although I don’t have my fuselage on hand currently).  An option that a VANs bubba or two did when the “self excitation” feature was having issues was to remove the bridge rectifier and essentially replace it with a small-ish 12V battery.

While I was in CAD drawing up my GIB headrest pad internal frame above, I went ahead and whipped up a model of that battery and 3D printed it out in case I need it for future planning and assessment.

I’m also happy to report that I got my gas caps back from the engravers, and they look very nice.  I wanted the verbiage to be minimal and succinct, so any future line boy or gal will avoid loading up my bird with jet fuel!

I then took another 45 minutes to do a final sanding and cleaning of the aft nose cover’s glare shield before taping it up to be clear coated with a 2K matte clear coat.

I shot a light coat, a medium coat and 2 wetter coats of the matte clear and then let it dry for a few hours before bringing it back into the shop.  Here it is, looking EXACTLY how I wanted it to look.  A matte finish with no glare, but a nice sheen with the carbon fiber weave showing through.  I honestly don’t even think I’m going to sand this… I’ll just press forward.

My evening task, after I did my search for parts and documents drill for a good hour, was to tape up the left wing leading edge, mark off the vortilon mounting locations, and then hot glue my 67° 3D printed jigs onto the leading edge.

Then, after sanding and prepping the left wing vortilons, I hot glued them to the lower tab of each template and nicely snugged up against the taped wing bottom.

I’ll note that in my push to get things done I’m following the unintended guidance of both Dave B. and Izzy regarding these vortilons.  Izzy noted on the COBA forum that Marc Z. gets on him constantly about his vortilons being on crooked, while Dave noted on his build log that he simply used the contour outline of each vortilon where it intersects the wing to be the ultimate decider for placement onto the wing (my paraphrasing).  Thus, I’m trying my best to get them mounted on straight and aligned, but not fretting if they’re off a hair and not perfectly exact.  

I made patterns out of the other (right wing) set of vortilons to cut 2 plies of BID for each vortilon and then prepregged those in plastic.  I then laid up the outboard side of each vortilon, and on the inboard and middle I had enough epoxy left over to peel ply those.

My middle vortilon seemed to be “leaning” just a hair, so I popped it nearly all the way off the template.  However, to keep it snug to both the template and the underside of the wing, I secured it with a clothespin.

I then left the left wing vortilon outboard layups to cure overnight.  Tomorrow I plan to finish the layups of the left wing vortilons, and get at least one side glassed on the right wing vortilons (hopefully both sides, but we’ll see).

. . . ya ain’t trying!

A couple of weeks ago I queried my paint guru at NAPA auto parts if he knew of any tips and tricks on how to buff out my single stage paint, as it is not your “normal” base coat/ clear coat paint job, where the clear coat then gets sanded out to a brilliant gloss.  As with the boat paint I used on the bottom of the bird, the paint looks great from 6 feet away, but as you get in close you can definitely see the dust and a few kamikaze bugs in the paint.

He told me the only trick he knew was to take it to the pro down the street, Phil, at H2R Finish Corrections, who does this all day long in his shop.  Phil had done one job on an airplane, a King Air to be exact, and was a little hesitant at first to take on this project. But since a huge part of his business is Corvettes —single stage paint on fiberglass— he was intrigued and interested in making a half-decently painted plastic airplane look like a super high end show car.

As I did at first in test sanding and buffing out a wheel pant, that looked ok but lost that glossy wet look in the process, I delivered my “sacrificially” painted wheel pants to him to test out.  His version of course came out infinitely better than mine, so in the ensuing week and a half I delivered more parts to Phil, while he in turn consulted a local legend who deals almost exclusively with boats… as in painted fiberglass.

Here we have the nose hatch door, that had so much dust in the paint when you looked at it from a close distance that I really thought I was going to have to sand it down and reshoot it… but with Phil at the helm it turned out fantastic!

Phil definitely had already proven on the wheel pants, nose hatch door and other parts that he could buff them out nicely, removing evidence of my combat painting with nearly all the dust and bugs extracted from the finish.  And his consultation to optimize both the process and the finish paid off big time for both.  With his dialing in his finishing process on my single stage painted parts, it was time to really get to work.

After coordinating our schedules, I loaded up my fuselage on the trailer and delivered it to him to finish up over the next week.  The next delivery will be the canopy and right wing.  Then the canard and left wing.  Then the top and bottom cowlings.  I’ll note that all of these will not only be sanded, buffed and polished, but ceramic coated as well to really ensure protection, durability and easy cleaning, not to mention a super smooth surface to aid in drag reduction!

Getting closer… and still pressing forward!

Today involved hopefully making the last dusty mess I will make inside the aircraft that I will ever make from here on out!

It involved 3 dust-producing tasks, with the first one being to notch the top aft side of the NG-30 upright channel to allow the future StarLink antenna (for inflight realtime Internet/WiFi capability… tested by my R&D guy, Marco! haha) to fit about an inch forward in the nose and better mount onto the top of the NG-30.  I taped off and marked the aft side of the NG-30 upright with a slight angle down going aft, to match the bottom of the antenna.  And then about an inch forward from the aft wall for the antenna “shelf.”

As you can see, I put plastic all around to help mitigate the copious amounts of dust that would be produced from this cut, which I made next.

My estimation of how far forward the antenna would nestle into the nose at the outboard corners was off a bit, as the antenna didn’t drop the extra 0.3″ I had planned on… I could have made another cut, but I called this good and will deal with the minor notches forward of the antenna later.  This definitely created a good fit for the antenna and I’m calling the op a success.

Dust-creating task #2 was “drilling” a 9/16″ (approx.) hole into the lower right side of the NG-30 upright for the L2 transponder antenna cable connector access.

As with so many jobs on this bird, this task was made quite challenging since I had so little clearance to get a drill/bit into that space to create the hole.  I started with quite a small drill bit on the right angle drill just to get the center position of the hole dialed in, but then needed something robust enough to make the hole.  Unfortunately any drill bits of decent diameters were simply too long to get anywhere near a straight drilling angle.

My answer?  End mills.  Yep, short and robust.  And since the fiberglass over foam is soft enough to do a plunge cut with an end mill, I just started with a 1/4″ diameter and moved up to a 3/8″ to mill out the material so that this side hole was the proper diameter.

Next up was installing the nearly decade-old bought L-2 transponder antenna (a Christmas gift actually).  Note the installation instructions that I poured through to assess if there would be any issues between this antenna and the StarLink Internet/WiFi antenna.  The optimized mounting position for the L-2 is vertical, which places the transmission pattern beaming out in all directions horizontally.  Mounted vertically, anything above or below the antenna has virtually no effect on its operation.

Obviously I’m not sure how the StarLink antenna will react to this L-2 transponder antenna in operation, and that will be discovered during functional testing.  But knowing that this L-2 guy won’t be bothered with the StarLink antenna, I pressed forward with my plan.

Here’s the L-2 inside the NG-30 upright channel pocket, snugged up to the inside right wall (nose is left side of pic).

Since I needed the L-2 to sit flat against the inside aft wall of the NG-30 upright channel to allow for securing via RTV AND positioned correctly to allow a proper interface with the cable connector, I had to do some checking and minor tweaking of the hole position with my aforementioned “mobile milling machine” (ha!).

Once the position and angles were all good, I cleaned the mating side of the antennal and inside aft wall of the NG-30 upright channel with acetone before slathering up both sides with the black Toyota RTV goop that I used for my internal carbon fiber baffles on the engine.

I then used foam and wood wedges to press the antenna into place, WHILE it was connected to the antenna cable and snugged up internally to the right sidewall as well… to ensure the cable connector had clearance if I want to remove it while installing all the nose components and wiring them up.

Dust-producing task #3 was simply a 3/8″ hole in the right upper corner of the panel, under the right longeron.  This will be for wire transiting from forward to aft of the instrument panel (no pic).

After about an hour of online research my last task of the evening was to sand the quite thick epoxy wipe that I did on the glare shield, a good week or so back (pic 1).

As I believe I mentioned before, as a GLARE shield I want the surface to be dull and non-reflective of sunlight.  But I also want the carbon fiber weave to be visible, uniform and look halfway decent.

After my research, my conclusion is that I will need to clearcoat (matte) the glare shield to bring out the weave to make it visible, and hide the sanding imperfections.  That being said, I wet sanded the epoxy wiped glare shield starting off with a couple rounds of 320 grit to block down the thickness of the epoxy a good bit, and then stepped through successive rounds of 800 → 1500 → 2000 → 2500 → 3000 grit before calling it good (pic 2).

Besides there being virtually no bright shiny spots remaining (all leveled), the surface is, not surprisingly, exceptionally smooth.  I’m very happy with how this turned out, and I’m hoping that after 2-3 rounds of clearcoat, the carbon fiber weave will be visible and surface looking uniform.

Now that I’ve got some of these mess-producing tasks knocked out, and the bird’s insides cleaned up again, I can press onward in getting electrical components installed and wired up.

As I noted in my last post, the installation of the GIB headrest components and the wiring took a bit longer than I had anticipated.

I’ll digress for a bit and discuss this morning’s EAA meeting, where I was regaling my fellow members of my painting adventures over breakfast.  I reiterated a number of times one of my primary mantras: It’s better to be lucky than good.

My frustration the night before last leading into all day yesterday was a missing ground wire that I had made up (back in 2018) for the SD-8 backup alternator’s self-excitation feature, which is not quite as racy as it sounds.  It means that the backup alternator can come online even if the battery is completely dead, something a normal alternator cannot do.  Now clearly a 6″ 20 ga ground wire with a Fast-On connector on one end, and a D-sub pin on the other is something I could gin up in 5 minutes and move on with my life.  However, this one happened to include a very specific 3K 3 watt resister spliced in line.  And of course there was the nagging question of simply, “where the hell did it go?” [you can see a new replacement black ground wire hanging out of the G6 ground buss awaiting a resistor]

Ahh, but life in general, and this build specifically, has a strange way of leading you to a better understanding of things, and thus it came to be in “the case of the missing SD-8 ground wire.”

You see, after digging back into the AeroElectric Connection book to verify I had everything hooked up correctly, I then spent a good hour and a half on the forum to ensure there wasn’t any specific intel that I had missed… and there was.  It turns out that the probability of needing a self-excitation feature is relatively low, and that Bob Nuckolls eventually began to eliminate this feature from his latest system diagrams.

Moreover, there was mixed results on the inclusion of the self-excitation feature, with it working great for some builders, and not so great for others.  This strongly suggested possible installation issues on some builders’ parts and/or implementation issues with other specific system architectures.  Nonetheless, I now know there may be some gremlins hiding in the shadows when it comes to incorporating and using this self-excitation feature.

I will still install it as Bob Nuckolls designed it, but with my eye on either rolling the SD-8 install back specifically as prescribed in the B&C install instructions, or to a unique circuit design used by some RV bubbas.  Only ops testing will bear out what eventual path I’ll take on this, and given I’ve captured the data for either alternative options, I think all is good on this and I’m pressing on with other component installs/wiring.

One final note is that for the added self-excitation feature, including the $6 I just spent to order another few 3K 3w resistors to replace the one I lost (no doubt I’ll find the original one in the next week or two!), I’ve got less than a whopping $40 in these extra parts.  So nothing gut-wrenching about eliminating the feature if it doesn’t work.

But I am happy to report, that besides that little nagging detail, and of course the crazy numbers of iterations and creative cable & component management I had to employ to get everything to fit into the headrest, it is finished and hopefully will be all good when I go live with the power!

Pressing forward . . .

My main push at the moment is getting the GIB headrest engine components, backup SD-8 alternator, GRT Engine Info System, etc. physically installed and wired up.  Much easier in concept than actual practice… covered a bit below.

First off was one of those minor tasks that I’ve literally had on my to do list for months now.  It took me months to keep remaking updated versions of it in CAD, then 3D printing those…  It’s an ABS plastic safety catch to ensure I don’t inadvertently engage the nose hatch handle in flight and pop that sucker open.

You can see the operation is quite simple: just a U-shaped arm that falls down over the T-handle, physically blocking it from being pulled.  To keep the arm in place is a velcro strap that wraps around both the catch arm and the handle body.

Since it’s ABS plastic, the lettering isn’t the cleanest, but it is functional and VERY lightweight.  I attached it to the large cable securing nut with a slathering of silicone RTV.  So far it’s on securely and works a treat.  Safety task complete!

Then there’s this beast!  The proverbial exercise in herding cats.  Since my shop computer is currently inop, I take a good number of trips into the house to check out my historical records (AKA my website) to figure out how I stuffed all this stuff in there previously… I’ve also had to buy a good bit of hardware as I of course can’t find the original stuff.

But I’m making good progress, albeit slow.  I took a good 45 minutes to test all the sockets in both the P9 and P10 connectors on the firewall, all the way to the opposite ends of these wire connections, many of which were behind the panel or in the nose.

Here below we have probably the 4th time I removed the SD-8 backup alternator components to gain access to the wiring.  It was definitely a slow iterative process to run all the wires and keep them out of the way of other components.

I had to run an 18 AWG ground wire to the hell hole and in the process of removing the wire covering in the CS spar, I inadvertently snipped a yellow fuel tank probe wire, which took 45 minutes and unimaginable physical positions to resplice together in situ inside the CS spar.  Then another crazy half hour just to get ONE 18AWG wire run from headrest to hell hole.  I seriously believe my wire capacity is tapped out!  No more. [Luckily I ran multiple extra/unused wires up to the nose!]

Besides a power and ground wire coming into the headrest for the firewall mounted electroair EIS coils, I also had a quite a robust 4-wire cable that needed to be spliced together between the electroair controller and the coils.  Here I’ve cut off a good amount and then opened the cable on the controller side (pic 1) and then cut and spliced the wires together with butt splice connectors, except the bare wire which I solder spliced (pic 2).

I also collected up all the stashes of wire labels I could find and then entered them into a spreadsheet to get organized for all this final wiring I’ll be doing on the plane.  I’ve also researched some circuits that I’ll get into when I construct them, and ordered cables, switches, relays, resistors, etc. for all the final wiring push.

Gettin’ er done!

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.

Yes, although I still have minor bits and pieces that will still need paint, with the major parts of the airplane painted I’m calling the paint complete!

First off, we have the bottom cowling in tri-color just as the top cowling, with the white strips on the outside successful painted… finishing off the 3 colors.

Another reason I’m calling the paint complete is that I cleaned up the top of the right canard, which had 2 very visible divots and decent blemish in the paint (if looking with the light reflecting correctly… I couldn’t grab a pic of it though) towards the inboard side, and a row of minor depressions about 3″ aft of the leading edge in the middle and outboard of the canard.

Since these weren’t just aesthetic issues, but rather on a flying surface where airflow is much more critical, I felt that I needed to fix it all before first flight.

So I covered up the middle area and left side of the canard, grabbed my cheap black paint and applied a guide coat.  Even then, I’m a bit surprised you can’t see these blemishes in the guide coat.

But clearly you can after I block sanded the top right canard with 180 grit wet sandpaper.  The round spot towards middle around a third way down from the root and the splotch closer to the leading edge were the 2 primary culprits.  You can also see a decent dip in elevation right at the root.

I then wet sanded the canard top with 240 grit (pic 1) and 320 grit (pic 2).

I’ll note that although there is a decent depression at the root, the majority of it resides inside the aft nose cover, as I’ve estimated with my finger.

It’s common sense, but I’ll nonetheless point out that by merely sanding the majority of the paint layers away the blemishes greatly diminish as well.  My decision was one of using a filler on the blemishes or simply a few coats of hi-build 2K primer.

After sanding to this point, I decided that a few coats of hi-build primer should do the trick.  And of course I wanted to be able to see the blemishes to focus my efforts on them, but also remove as much of the cheap black paint as possible.  So that was my next task.

I then shot a few rounds of hi-build 2K primer in the blemishes and a good 4-5 coats on the inboard canard root to fill that significant dip.  The 2K primer needs 4-6 hours to cure before sanding, unless you force cure it with heat.  Thus the heat lamps under the canard, which knocked the cure time down to 2.5 hours.

It was in the mid-60s when I shot the seal coat on the right canard top, but the temp was falling fast as evening set in.  We are supposed to have a good amount of rain this coming week, so I wanted/needed to get this done today.

By the time I shot the second and last coat of white paint, the temps were in the 50’s, so I employed the heat lamps again for about 45 minutes before moving the canard into the shop.

As you can see (or probably not actually! ha), the paint turned out pretty darn good and the divots are all gone.

I then turned my sights on repairing my GRT Hall Effect amp sensor for both the primary alternator and back-up alternator leads.  I added wet flox to the sensor before inserting it into the gap of the green “donut,” and then dabbed a little bit more flox on the outside and sensor junction with the “donut.”

I grabbed this shot to show the alternator B-lead (bottom red connector), the battery ground cable (lower left yellow cable) with the internal hell hole ground buss (“Forest-of-tabs” left side).   You can also see the big yellow starter cable and smaller diameter alternator F-lead passing through the firewall just behind and below the Hall Effect “donut.”  Finally, the blue split aluminum nut center right is securing the throttle cable exiting aft out of the firewall.

I also finally secured all the major power cables in an Adel clamp I placed years ago, with the task just now getting completed!

Clearly still a myriad more tasks to do, but slowly nugging ’em out.  Rock on!

I started off today by pulling up the taped up black stripes and unpainted outboard strips to reveal the just-painted blue cowling along with the black stripes.

I then taped along the outboard edge of the black stripes inward to cover all the blue and black paint.  I then shot the outboard strips with a couple coats of white paint.

In addition, I had done a final sanding with 320 grit on the elevator weights’ anti-ice shields, cleaned them and shot them with white paint as well.

If the weather holds for at least one more day I plan on sanding down, filling divots, and repainting the top right canard to get it up to final flight standards.

Pressing forward!