Late yesterday afternoon when I walked into the shop I realized I had been the victim of yet another squirrel assault in that they took out 3 light bars by gnawing through the wires.  I spent about 20 minutes assessing what damage they did, but since I was working on the top cowling and had light in the center of the shop, I just left these lights inop for now and didn’t spend time to fix them.

I was met with more of the same today, this time they took down the whole front center bay ring of LED light bars.  Only the old original shop fluorescent light bar was left operational.  I took the time to repair these front bay lights as well as the two light bars next to each other in the first pic above.  Then at some point in the evening, the splice on the nubs they left on the first light gave out and I lost the front bay lights again. I just left them until tomorrow as I finished up my layups (below).

Now, before I ever even went out to the shop, I had brunch with Jess and had a couple of activities somewhat holiday related.  So I again got back home later in the afternoon.

I then took a couple of hours to finalize my research and my build plan for the wings’ outboard leading edge lights.  The big change is I decided that I needed to make splashes, which are a fancy name for molds of the wing LE where the lights will be located.  These splashes will be used to both make the light lenses, as well as the internal flange that each lens will attach to.

To make the splashes, I first applied yellow adhesive film to each wing and marked up my light location and shape.  I then covered my markups with clear plastic packing tape as my mold release.  I then cut 2 plies of BID off the roll for each side, and 2 larger single pieces of UNI from scraps for each side.  I then used some larger scraps of BID and UNI to cobble together another 1.5-2 plies more for each side.  I also gathered up 4 paint stir sticks (2 per side) to use as the splash reinforcement cross piece on both the top and bottom side of the splash.

Here we have the top of the right wing leading edge light splash (pic 1) and the left wing splash (pic 2).

And then bottom side of the right wing splash (pic 1) and the left wing splash (pic 2).  The duct tape is to hold the paint stir sticks tight against the wing and the glass (I repaired the tape on the bottom outboard side of the left wing splash).

I had a lot more on my to-do list for the night of course, but the light issue knocked me back at least an hour.  Tomorrow I’ll fix the front bay lights and get back to finalizing the finishing tasks on the strake bottom leading edges, the top cowling and wing LE lights.

Pressing forward!

As I’m gearing up to install my wing leading edge landing/wig-wag lights I need a quick way to identify 67°, which is of course parallel to aircraft centerline.  It’s also the same angle that we install our vortilons on the wings’ leading edges.  Of course in the Roncz canard plans there is an included outline of a Vortilon Installation Jig, which I made up way back in 2012.  But with it having been drenched in the hurricane/tornado that hit my old hangar, it’s seen better days.

I also wanted something that carried that 67° both up & down vertically, as well as over/ under the wing a bit for easier vertical alignment when I install the vortilons. With vertical tabs of the jig 90° to the horizontal leading edge segment it will also allow me to mark the edges of the wing leading edge light pocket.  So I ginned up a new and improved jig in rather short order in CAD, and 3D printed it out.  Not bad and it works as designed!

I then got around to knocking down the micro’d aft vertical and underside trailing edge of the top cowling on both sides with 80 grit sandpaper on the orbital sander.  I then switched to a sanding board to hand sand the left side (pic 1) and the right (pic 2)… with both sides looking obviously much better than pre-micro.

Another couple shots of the sanded micro on the aft end of the top cowling, on the left side (pic 1) and the right (pic 2).

I’m still getting a slight bit of oil canning on the right side shoulder bump, where the upper cowling is secured to the bird.  So on the CAMLOC flange I added a single ply of BID, 2.5″ wide and peel plied the layup.

On the inside lip of the top cowling I added 2 plies of carbon fiber: the first 2.5″ wide and the next 1.5″ wide.  I then peel plied that layup as well.  Tomorrow I’ll redrill the CAMLOC holes and see if my added glass/CF eliminates the oil canning.

Tonight is a date night with Jess, and having gotten a late start on the bird this afternoon, I wanted to get some epoxy curing… so my next and final task for the evening was whipping up some micro/West 410 and applying it all along the underside of the strake leading edge, both on the right strake here and the left as well.

I then closed up shop and headed for a nice evening out with Jess.

Rock n’ roll!

I started out the first half of the day today at the airport helping Guy Williams fix his right main gear, which had the wheel leaning inboard a bit too much; which was allowing the brake disc to rub against the heat shield, and eventually a bit on the gear leg as well (not too bad though).  Was this a result of some other heat causing issue?  Or was this THE heat causing issue?

Kind of a chicken vs egg scenario here on what the initial heat issue was, but the bottom line as you can see from the looks of the normal left gear leg (pic 1) versus the right gear leg (pic 2)… there was a definite need for some intervention.

With a couple of hair dryers and laser thermometer in hand, we essentially heat soaked the right gear leg just above the axle and got it up to about 177° F max temp.  Most temp readings were in the 150-160° F range.  I had Guy buy a rather robust steel pipe, about 2′ long, which we slid over the axle.  This helped not only provide weighted pressure to help motivate the axle/gear leg to pivot back inboard, but also gave us an indicator as to if and how much movement was actually occurring.

It took about 2 hours total of heating, watching and assessing, but the bottom gear leg definitely pivoted very slowly back very close to its original position.  By using a level and taking some measurements after we had it setting fully on both gear legs, I estimate that if we had spent another 45-60 minutes we may have been able to get the last 1/4″ back to get much closer to exactly matching the left gear.  But our initial assessment showed it was definitely very close to good as we left out to go to lunch and let the gear leg cool down to ambient temperature.

The bottom line is that Guy is happy and we both are very confident that this dog will hunt!

Now, back in my shop I knocked out the sanding of the round 2 application of micro inside the left strake RAM air scoop tube… which was a little rough inside.  With the micro sanded to a nice smooth tube shape, I then epoxy wiped the sanded micro/inside tube over the remainder of the evening.  I got 3 epoxy wipe coats in total.

I had already cheese grated the micro I had added to the top cowling, and tonight I prepped and mounted the top cowling back on the bird.  I will note that just prior to installing the cowling, I sanded down the wing seam areas that interface with the cowling side edges.

I then gave the micro’d areas a thorough initial sanding using my orbital sander with an 80 grit disc.

Now, as I was installing the cowling, I put the majority of the left side CAMLOCs in first, and didn’t realize that the front right corner of the top cowling was not seating well with the wing & strake edges.  So I didn’t sand the front right side of the top cowling tonight, and will work that tomorrow.

I did tape up and prep the bottom side trailing edges and aft vertical ‘walls’ of the top cowling in prep for micro.

And then whipped up some micro/West 410 and slathered it on both sides of the top cowling.  Again, I’ll note that except for a few minor adds or fills, this pretty much completes the major micro filling for the top cowling.  In addition, I will be adding phenolic “washers” at the CAMLOC mounting hole positions to ensure the holes don’t break down or crack over time due to use (as SO many composite aircraft cowlings do).

I also spent a good bit of time both inside the house and at the plane assessing and attempting to finalize my wing leading edge landing/wig-wag lights install plan.  Here’s a quick teaser of where the left wing leading edge light pocket will get installed.

And with that, I called it a night.  And yes…
still pressing forward!

I had a good, in-depth discussion with Shane Banquer yesterday regarding my baggage pods that he has to make molds from, as well as a number of other various points regarding painting.

We discussed the pros and cons of painting the aileron and rudder hinges, at which time I told Shane I was thinking about crafting an insert that would slide into the hinge notches to protect both the hinge pin holes and interfacing edges from getting paint applied in or on.  Well, here is the result of that discussion: a test insert for painting the hinges, IF I decide to go that route.

I then spent a good bit of time sanding the epoxy wiped right wing leading edge, first with 80 grit on my orbital to knock it down a good bit.  Then I used a 30″ board to wet sand it with 150 grit.  I’m happy to report at this point, that besides a final scuffing and cleanup, the right wing/aileron (top) and winglet/rudder is ready for primer and paint.

I spent another good hour working primarily the left aileron’s middle hinge configuration and internal hinge clearance, which once completed eliminated that awful middle hinge squawking.

As I assessed the final left aileron install and configuration, I decided I wasn’t happen with the middle hinge gap with the wing notch it sits in… it was too big forward of the hinge and wasn’t tight like all the other (at this point) hinge notch gaps (sorry, no ‘before’ pic).  I realized if I didn’t fix it now that I would regret it later on… so I removed the aileron, temporarily attached a taped-up stir stick to the underside edge of the notch, and slathered on some flox that I whipped up using MGS 285 epoxy (pic 1).  A few hours later I removed the taped stir stick to reveal the floxed edge on its own (pic 2).

I did essentially this same process on the left aileron inboard hinge notch and the left rudder bottom hinge notch as well, but didn’t document either of those… so I thought I would show you what I’m up to here.  I did a rough sand of the added flox to knock down the high spots (pic 1) and then marked the “cut to” line just a hair aft of the actual edge line I want (pic 2).

I cut the flox edge up to the marked line using the “Fein” saw (pic 1) before finalizing the sanding and shaping of the left aileron middle hinge added flox edge (pic 2).

A little while later I reinstalled the left aileron, and here’s what it looks like.  Much, much better… albeit I still may add a scooch of micro now on the inboard (right) side to close up THAT gap a hair (yes, unending!).

At this point it was finally time to trim the wing-to-winglet fairings respective trailing edges.  To have the TEs perpendicular to aircraft CL I ran a string across the trailing edge of the rudders just where they met the fairing wall aft top edge (I’ll note that the prerequisite task to do this was sanding down the epoxy wiped outboard front corner of the right rudder, then installing the rudder back into place).

I then realized that to get a better cut mark I needed the string to be below the fairing, so repositioned it on each side.  I then marked the left fairing TE for cutting (pic 1) and the right fairing as well (pic 2).

I then took a dinner break to spend a few hours with Jess.

Upon my return to the shop I knocked out cutting the aft edge of the left winglet intersection fairing (pic 1) and the right fairing’s aft edge too (pic 2).

Here we have a couple more representative shots of the cut aft edge of the left winglet intersection fairing.

Again, I’m even more happy to report that the left wing/aileron (top) and winglet/rudder meet my minimum requirements for primer and paint!

Tomorrow I’ll finish up any minor tasks on the wings, winglets and strakes as I press on with the top and bottom cowling paint prep, as well as the centerline fuselage and canopy interface finalization for micro finishing.

I started out today by spending a couple hours at the airport with Guy Williams putting the new wing lift jacks to the test… which they passed splendidly.  I do plan on modifying them with some type of positive stop to not rely solely on the bottle jack for keeping the wing/strake elevated, but that’s a minor issue.

Again, Guy is dealing with a warped main gear leg on the right side, almost certainly caused from braking heat damage.  He’s assessing his options for repairing it.

Back in my shop, I started by knocking down the right winglet LE cured epoxy wipes with an 80 grit disc on the orbital sander.

I then used a long sanding board to sand down another round of micro/West 410 that I had added to the initial added fill to the right wing leading edge.  I’ll note that the LE still isn’t laser straight, but it’s much, much straighter and will be very close to spot on straight once I add a few rounds of primer and sand those down.

With sanding complete, I epoxy wiped the right wing leading edge with 4 rounds.

Along with the right wing leading edge above, I also epoxy wiped the outboard right rudder… which I had sanded down some micro/West 410 (leftover from the wing LE added fill) that I added to this front lower corner on the outboard side of the right rudder.  This very minor add results in this corner matching the surface level of the matching/interfacing corner of the winglet.

I’m also very happy to report that over the last few days I dialed in and finalized the sanding/shaping/contouring in and around the areas of the intersection of the winglet leading edge to the wing… on both left and right sides.  Both of which were recently covered with black guide coat.  I may have some very minor tweaking to do (not surprisingly) after primer is applied, but those areas are looking pretty darn good now.

In between epoxy wipes, I then got around to micro’ing up the top cowling. My main target here was the front outboard corners to allow me to integrate them with the strake micro fill surfaces.  As you can see I also got the center backbone depression and top aft edge micro’d up as well.  I still need to do add micro on the aft vertical areas and the undersides of the “trailing edges.”

In the same fashion as the right rudder above, I finished wet sanding the epoxy wiped added micro to the front lower outboard corner of the left rudder as well, before installing it back on the left winglet.

I then wet sanded both sides of the rudder across the seams onto the winglet as well, to get the surface levels as evenly matched as possible.  Here we have the left rudder final install, micro finished, ready for primer and paint on the outboard side (pic 1) and the inboard side (pic 2). [Final configuration/install of the left winglet top video camera mount coming up soon]

Thankfully the last couple of days have been warmer and I haven’t needed to utilize the Kerosene torpedo heaters, but I wanted to note that I broke out my CO detector to ensure I wasn’t gassing myself with carbon monoxide in the shop by firing up those heaters.  So far so good, and no sign of any CO.  Honestly, I didn’t expect any because the consumption burn rate on Kerosene is reportedly very complete.

My biggest issue at the moment, and my final task of the evening (no pics), is the reinstallation and configuration of the left aileron back onto the left wing.  In my constant rush to get stuff done, I believe that I allowed too much epoxy to fill in the aileron hinge screw holes in the wing during its epoxy wiping.  I figured the surrounding/existing holes would simply allow me to redrill through the cured epoxy and thought nothing of it.

Well, apparently the cured epoxy caused some slight offsets during the redrilling of those hinge screw holes, because I haven’t been able to get the left aileron installed back into its pre-epoxy wipe position… and I’m having some clear squawking from the middle hinge with the aileron installed. Bottom line is it needs some tweaking and TLC to get back to good.

With that said, I’m still getting closer to paint every day… pressing forward!

Today was the first decently warm day we’ve had since Thanksgiving, so I decided it was time to knock out an outdoor task primarily for my Long-EZ buddy, Guy Williams. As I noted, the right main gear strut on his Long-EZ is having some gear issues as a result of heat induced at some point by the brakes.  In essence, the camber of both wheels have the tops both leaning towards the left, when they both should have the wheel tops more outboard than the bottom of the wheels.  Yep, something is askew!

I ran down to Lowe’s hardware and bought a sheet of 3/4″ plywood (buried in pic below) to construct the wing lift jacks, and also picked up the first round of lumber for constructing the in-shop post cure heat room/paint booth.

Back home I unloaded all the other stuff by quickly crossloading it to my nearby utility trailer.

With my 3/4″ sheet of plywood now unburdened by what had been (pic 1), I cut the sheet into 3 pieces: two for the jack uprights and the smaller piece for the jack bases (pic 2).

There are four (4) uprights to each lift jack, which I cut out of each of the 2 larger 3/4″ plywood pieces on the table saw.

With the remaining piece of 3/4″ plywood, I cut 2 bottom bases out of it: about 20″ x 20″ (pic 1), and then 2 smaller top cap pieces 8.5″ x 9″ (pic 2).

I then dug through my scrap pile under the carport to grab two 4x4s and cut those at ~30″ long (pic 1).  I then made all the initial 5″ wide x 12″ high notches in the uprights (upside down in pic 2).

I then marked an angled line on each upright and cut each one with my Skil saw.

Here we have the angled cut lines complete for one set of uprights, with the next set getting cut next.

A couple of hours later, and Voila!  A set of 2 fully functioning and operational wing lift jacks!

I of course tested the height using my Long-EZ as the test subject.  Looks like these dogs will hunt!

I spoke with Guy and we plan on doing a live ops check with these wing lift jacks in a couple days.

I’ll note one other topic that I was remiss in communicating in my last post: a squirrel war report.  Apparently, with the weather having gotten quite cold, the squirrels did another full frontal assault in trying to nest in my shop.  Well, when I dismantled their latest rounds of nest-building they went ballistic!  The last couple of days I’ve walked into downed lights, entire light banks out of commission, speaker wires cut, CAT-5 cables cut, Bluetooth puck cables cut, Wi-Fi router power cable destroyed, etc.  I mean they really wanted some payback for their destroyed nests.

Well, after Day 2 of their rampage I had enough.  I spent over $50 on mothballs and poison rodent food and stuffed the mothball packs into their ingress and egress points, as well as in the 3 nest areas that I know of.  It took me well over an hour to get the lights back online… each day.  The other stuff is still inop, but a couple of days later now and I’ve seen zero signs of the squirrels.

So, lesson learned… keep deploying fresh mothballs every so often to keep those sadistic little bastards out of the shop!

Steady work going on over the last couple of days on a myriad of smallish tasks in prep of getting this bird ready for post cure and then paint.

I got the right winglet leading edge added micro/West 410 fill sanded down and then epoxy wiped with 4 coats of West epoxy.  The right winglet LE isn’t as razor straight as the left side, but it’s pretty darn close and I’m not going to spend a ton more of time on it… to get it perfectly straight would require another round of fill and I just don’t think it’s worth it.  I want this plane flying, not passing straight edge inspections on leading edges down to thousands of an inch!

Now, that being said there is a level of straightness that I do want, and the leading edge of the right wing is currently not cutting the mustard.  So I sanded it down and slathered on West 410/micro to get it significantly straighter than it is now.  I’ll sand it down tomorrow and epoxy wipe it as I did the right winglet (and left wing too).

I initially sanded the epoxy wiped outboard left wing and outboard left winglet, knocking down the epoxy with 80 grit on the orbital sander.  I then spent a good bit of time working the lower front corner interface and surface level betwixt winglet and rudder.

I think with some minor sanding of some added West 410/micro fill (scraps from right wing LE) on the very front lower corner of the rudder it should have a nice transition from the winglet corner level.  Once I get the lower corner dialed in, I’ll then wet sand across the rudder-winglet interface seams —both inboard & outboard sides— to ensure those are nice and level with each other.

I did a bunch of other odd tasks as well, along with a good bit of assessing on the inboard hinge on the left aileron… that looks to need some tweaking and I’ll report on that as soon as I get a final assessment of what is required.

Regardless, my goal is to wrap up all the wing/aileron, winglet/rudder, and strake micro-finishing prep for primer and paint and move on to top cowl, turtledeck, longerons, and nose micro-finishing.

Pressing forward!

Today, before I changed into my shop clothes I headed downtown to Harbor Freight to pick up a couple of bottle jacks to use in some wooden wing lift/jack stands to allow lifting one wing or both wings up at the same time.  Sometimes on these birds you want to be able to work on the main gear, brakes, wheels, etc. without using a main gear leg as the jacking point.

I had to buy these bottle jacks today since they were on sale, making them cheaper than the significantly smaller (but still would have worked) 4 ton bottle jacks.

Again, my timeline in regards to working these stands now is simply because my buddy Guy Williams needs them to repair his heat warped gear leg on his Long-EZ.  And of course I wouldn’t be surprised if I need them at some in the near future as well (hopefully not for the same reason!).

I also rounded up the original pic that Steve Rothert posted of his stand, and this was the best (and cheapest) of all the ones I saw on the COBA forum… and there were plenty examples to be sure.

Back in the shop I removed and installed the left aileron a couple times as I dialed in the wing’s inboard aileron pocket hinge notch trailing edge.  After some minor finagling and sanding I got it where it allowed me to install the aileron in place, just without the unsightly wide, off-angle gap.

I live fairly near the high school and my friend’s daughter, my now not-so-little buddy, has been experiencing some bullying issues on her school bus.  The past couple weeks she’s been walking to my house and hanging out for 2-3 hours until her mom can pick her up after work.  Well, she helped me do the final wet sanding of wing and aileron at the seams between the two, to ensure the surfaces are level with each other.

After sanding down the West 410/micro added fill on the outboard end and leading edge of the left wing, I then whipped up some West epoxy with 205 fast hardener to do the first round of epoxy wipes on the sanded added wing filler (pic 1).

I installed the left rudder and assessed some issues that needed worked, the main area being the thick micro fill on the outboard winglet at the bottom front corner intersection with the rudder.  There was at least a good 0.1″ jut out of the winglet edge at this corner vs the rudder, so I removed the rudder and aggressively sanded this corner but also kept watchful eye on ensuring it flowed with the remaining winglet surface (pic 2).  There are some tricky contours in play on these outboard winglets.  My sanding left a patch of bare micro, which in itself isn’t an issue, it’s the hard edge between it and the surrounding epoxy wiped surface that I wanted to reestablish a smooth transition.  Thus I also epoxy wiped the area I sanded at the bottom rudder corner, along with the wing.

These pics are at the end of the evening, with 3 total coats of epoxy wipes.  Also note the gap between the winglet and rudder front edge was a little too wide just below the bottom hinge, so I added a flocro edge both on the winglet side and the rudder side.

Over on the right side I sanded down the leading edge of the right winglet to allow me to add West 410/micro to it.  Again, eyeballing it the winglet LE looked straight, but with a straight edge against it you could see some peaks and valleys, around 0.1″ in variance.  Tomorrow I’ll sand it straight and re-epoxy wipe the LE.  I also plan on doing the same process for the right wing LE, which is pretty much the same story.

I closed out the major task portion of the evening by wet sanding the left strake top and leading edge, as well as the RAM air inlet on the leading edge, with 150 grit.  Inside the air inlet was some rough spots so I whipped up some West 410 and applied it on the inner inlet tube [note red Kerosene heater #2 in lower left corner: specifically purchased for the upcoming post cure].

I also wet sanded all the smaller areas I epoxy wiped yesterday, like the right wing video camera threaded inserts, right wing TE spot, etc.

I had padded the mold for my top left winglet video camera mount for the layup, but I may have overdone it for the 1/8″ thick internal protective foam rubber padding I had planned on using… so as not to scratch up the paint on the winglet top.

Again, the weather has been quite chilly, so I fired up the Kerosene heater to run for about 10 minutes to get the shop nice and toasty before I locked up for the evening. While the heater was running I grabbed some 1/8″ thick cardboard and taped it to the top of the left winglet.  I then put the glassed video camera mounting base cap onto the winglet.  It fit ok, but not overly snug as I would prefer… so more finagling will be in the works for this guy.  I may punt and simply go with 1/4″ (vs 1/8″) foam padding.  We’ll see.

It was again a late evening, so with the shop given it’s last blast of hot air for the night, I locked ‘er up and headed inside.

Moving forward…

I started in on adding tape and even some cardboard to the top of the left winglet for what will be yet another video camera mount.  I added the cardboard since I will be using a rubber pad on the inside of the mount to ensure I don’t damage the paint on the winglet.  I’ll use that same rubber on the wing and right strake video camera mounts as well.

I then cut out 3 plies of BID (off the roll… haven’t done that in a while) and 2 plies of UNI (from leftover scraps) to use the same layup schedule I have on the other video camera mounts: BID-UNI-BID-UNI-BID.

I wetted out some peel ply first before laying up the 5 plies of glass, and then topped that off with some peel ply (pic 1).  Many hours later after the layup was about 90% cured, I pulled the top peel ply layer off (pic 2).

A little while later I pulled the entire layup off the left winglet top (pic 1) and then pulled the interior peel ply and simply cut the un-epoxied glass off around the edges (pic 2).

I then set the video camera mount back onto the left winglet to do its final cure overnight.

I had to run downtown for some Kerosene at a gas station that I found where I could simply pump it into a container.  I ended up going out for a quick bite with Jess, and while waiting for our food to arrive I got a call from my local canardian buddy Guy Williams.  He has heat damage to one of his Long-EZ gear legs and needs to jack up his bird to get the gear free hanging.

I had done some research on the COBA forum a week or two ago noting Steve Rothert’s roll-your-own jack stand design, before making a quick CAD model of what I remembered his design to be tonight.  I then sent these renderings to Guy to show him what we could do to help get his bird fixed and back in the air.

Back in the shop I did a A LOT of sanding on the front outboard corner of the left wing to knock down a couple of high spots, and deal with some low spot areas as well (partly my doing from my sanding down this area to knock the wingtip micro fill down a good bit).  The end result was that I had a slight low area that I decided to fill with West 410.  This is the area that I showed you had black guide coat sprayed on it in the past post.

Another problem area that I sprayed black guide coat on was over on the right wing, in a swath from the TE forward to just outboard of the wing bolt access hole.  As on the left wing above, I sanded this down for a good 20-30 minutes.  You’ll note some guide coat still showing in spots that are VERY shallow, but not high enough to get sanded off. At this point I’m going to leave some low spots that should get filled in with the first few rounds of epoxy primer that I will shoot, and then another round or two of high build 2K primer after that.  If need be, on TOP of the epoxy primer I’ll fill whatever divots or imperfections need filled.

I’ll note that just above and outboard of the wing bolt access hole I broke through back into original raw micro.  I hit this with a round of epoxy wipes as I was doing those below.

Yep, as I mixed up some West epoxy with fast hardener for the 410 fill I did on the left wing above, I used a bit of that raw epoxy to some epoxy wipes on the right wing video camera threaded inserts, a spot on the right wing outboard TE, a bit on the inboard corner of the right aileron, outboard right rudder, outboard left winglet, etc.

I then did another round of epoxy wipes about an hour later for another coat.

I wet sanded the entire top of the left wing and leading edge, as well as the left aileron top and both sides of the left rudder with 150 grit.  I then temp installed the left aileron.

I’ll note that cleaning up the hinges on the left aileron to put the other side hinge halves in place took WAY longer than I expected, and I spent nearly an hour getting those fine tuned and installed.

Now, pre-epoxy wipes I didn’t like the gap of the inboard left aileron hinge notch, so I filled it in with a small edge of flox, and then some micro/West 410 over that to finalize the fill on the very edge of the hinge notch, just underneath the screws in the pic below.

However, on the outboard/left side it’s a tad too thick/wide still and is not allowing the hinge to seat all the way forward.  This will be a simple fix of sanding it down a little.  Just wanted to show yet another task that I didn’t really report on earlier (I did the same thing on the bottom hinge of the left rudder).

I then ended the evening by wet sanding the right strake top and leading edge with 150 grit.  It turned out pretty nice if I do say so myself.

Tomorrow I will continue pressing forward with my primer & paint prepping tasks!

Yes, I’m guessing pretty much across the U.S. the cold weather rolled in with a vengeance just after Thanksgiving.  Thank God for Black Friday, since I was able to nab a myriad of tools and supplies for my main upcoming tasks: a post cure of all the major airplane components, and then painting.

One Black Friday sale I availed myself to was this torpedo heater from Tractor Supply.  I’ve had it for a couple of days now, and finally got around to filling ‘er with Kerosene and firing it up.  It definitely does its job… I can say that!  Moreover, this is a critical piece of equipment for my upcoming post cure.

I’ve also spent the last couple of days doing a deep dive on exactly what I need for the post cure, and then the paint following that.  Again, I’ve hit a number of Black Friday sales to pick up a couple extra paint guns and a slew of painting supplies while it was all on sale.

Today I got back to building on the bird for a good bit.  My main task was mounting the right rudder and aileron that I wet sanded with 150 grit sandpaper (last night).  I then spent a good bit of time sanding both the aileron and wing across the intersection seams, as well as the rudder with the winglet (on both sides).  I’m very pleased with both the gaps between aileron and wing, and rudder and winglet… as well as the surface level where they meet.

You may note the black paint I’ve sprayed as a guide coat in some problem areas, which again I did last night.  I’ll sand these down most likely tomorrow to have all the surfaces ready for primer.

I also finished prepping the right wing video camera mounting threaded insert hard points (yes, that I worked on last night!) for a few rounds of epoxy wipes to ensure they are nice and sealed for primer and paint.  Again, note the applied guide coat for another problem area that needs worked.

I then spent a good little bit wet sanding both sides of the left rudder with 150 grit sandpaper.  I focused on the left winglet (only) to have it close to very final shape to then use it as a mold for the top of left winglet video camera mount.

I didn’t get a shot of it, but I spent the remainder of my evening taping up the top of the left winglet and cutting glass in prep for the top of left winglet video camera mount that I plan on laying up first thing tomorrow (so I can monitor the kerosene torpedo heater).  And with that, I called it a night.

Still pressing forward!