I’ve spent the last few days prepping for my major project update video.

Besides giving the workshop a good cleaning and organizing, I also mounted the canard, canopy, aft nose/ avionics cover and nose hatch door.  I also put the front seat cushions and temporarily taped the headrest pads in place.

I also pulled tape off the canopy, wingtip NAV/strobe lights and a number of other places.

I vacuumed out the engine compartment and wiped down a good bit of the engine components.

I also mounted the wheel pants (airing up the tires first), RAM air scoop and prop spinner.

As you can see in the background, I also hung sheets of plastic around the bird to mitigate the dust from getting everywhere when I sand the micro finish to contour on all the top surfaces.

Although I did record a couple segments of the major project update video last night, I knocked out the remainder of the video this evening.

I then got to work editing the video.

Tomorrow I plan on having the video edited, complete and uploaded to YouTube, at which time I’ll get back to work on the plane.

This blog post covers that last few days.  I’ll start off by noting that yesterday I was unexpectedly asked by my friend Shelly to take her to an appointment down in Wilmington to remove stitches from her recent foot operation.  Needless to say, that pretty much wiped out my shop time for any tasks other than some general cleanup and hanging some dust-retaining plastic for my upcoming micro-finishing ops.

Rewinding a few days: I wanted to get some layups knocked out as I’ve got a few iterative rounds of final fitting of the top cowl front edge to the turtledeck coming up.  My original plan for the right side where the top cowl oil cans between 2 CAMLOCs, leaving the interfacing turtledeck surface low, was to build up the turtledeck somehow…. but then I decided to underfill the top cowling front edge from inside to fill in the air gap and simply sand down the outer surface of the top cowling level with the turtledeck.  Again, this will almost certainly be an iterative process, but in the end I think it will work much better than adding more material to the turtledeck.

I started with 3 stepped plies of carbon fiber on the inside right front edge of the top cowling.  I realized when I started to pull the peel ply that I had failed to grab some pics, so here is peel ply coming off (pic 1) and after cure with the peel ply off and CAMLOC holes clear again (pic 2).

I started the process to a much lesser degree on the left side as well, with a long single ply of CF to help fill in a slight gap, then another semi-circular ply on the inboard side (right in pics below).  Again, carbon fiber layup with peel ply (pic 1) and after cure with the peel ply removed, razor trimmed and CAMLOC holes clear (pic 2).

I had a little bit of epoxy left over in my cup, which as you probably know by now I hate to waste, so I did a quick 2-ply carbon fiber layup for the bottom lip of a GIB seatback hole cover that I will construct over time.  Here it is with peel ply on the underside and topside of the layup.

And then after cure with the peel ply removed, but not yet trimmed to shape.

Again, I started hanging plastic in prep for all the dust I’m going to create when micro-finishing the top of the bird in prep for painting.  I started by specifically hanging the plastic in the areas around the nose of the plane that would be hard to do with the canard in place.

Oh, by the way, note that I pulled the canard out of the house and installed it on the bird.

Also clearly visible is the aft nose/avionics cover and recently sanded nose hatch door in place.

Nothing is ever accomplished without sacrifice, and for me I spent well over half an hour looking for the baggie with all the aft nose/avionics cover hardware.  Even then, about half the CAMLOCs were missing so I spent nearly an hour in trial and error fitting of CAMLOCs to “finalize” fit (not all, since paint may require a few CAMLOC size changes).  To avoid playing the ever-so-fun “find me if you can” game, I created an Aft Nose/Avionics Cover Hardware Card like I have for both cowlings, RAM air scoop and wheel pants.

Besides finalizing my task list for such things as the aft nose/avionics cover, nose hatch cover, canard, elevators, etc., my installing of all these on the bird is a final pre-micro finish hurrah for one of the final major project update videos I’m about to record.  This is the first time during this build that this airplane will have all the major components (minus panel) installed together in essentially a “flight ready” status… and I want to capture it in the video.  Yes, I admit it’s for bragging rights, motivational fun and build status documentation all in one.

Speaking of documentation, I had compiled a video while I was constructing the exhaust pipe brackets and was waiting for James to do the final welding on the brackets before I posted the video.  However, James is neck deep in moving his business operations to a brand new just-built shop, and I know he’s super busy.  I wanted to get the exhaust pipe bracket video out before I post the major project update video so the sequencing wouldn’t be weird or out of order, so I finalized the exhaust pipe bracket video and uploaded it.  Here it is.

And with that, I’m going to get back to my shop cleanup and final task prep for my major project update video.  Once I’m done with the video, I’m pulling and bagging the engine and then rolling into micro-finishing the fuselage, strakes, wings and winglets.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, Jess and I went out of town for a good portion of the day today, so I obviously didn’t get much done in the shop.

That being said, I did get the bottom cowling removed and then re-installed the exhaust pipe brackets in prep for my upcoming major project update video.

I also pulled off the taped metal block that I used to weigh down the carbon fiber clip layup inside the top cowling that will secure the wire push-pull handle that opens and secures the oil check door.

Here we have the cured carbon fiber clip on the inside of the top cowling, still yet to have the peel ply pulled or clip trimmed to shape.

After getting the clip layup cleaned up, I figured the easiest way to describe it in action was to simply show it in operation.  Here’s a short clip (pardon the pun) of it in action.

As I noted in the video description, this clip will keep the oil check door securing wire in place during flight to ensure that 1) the door stays closed and 2) the wire doesn’t work its way out of the cowling to interfere with the prop [note: it shouldn’t due to its length being intentionally too short to enter the prop arc].

Tomorrow I plan on getting a few more tasks out of the way, again, in prep for my major update video…. after which I’ll get to micro finishing the top side of the bird.

I started off today by pulling the weights and the tape off the oil check door… so far at this point the egregious fitting of the first door configuration has been remedied, with the door secured very closely in alignment with the surrounding top cowl surface.

Before I freed the oil check door into the open position, I wanted to have it physically secured to the hinge tab (with more than just flox and glass) so I prepped 2 stainless steel cherry pop rivets by shooting them with primer.  Hopefully this will eliminate or at least mitigate the galvanic corrosion that can happen between steel and/or aluminum with carbon fiber.  I have to note here that that’s one of the big downfalls of carbon fiber.

Here I’ve drilled out the previous rivet holes and installed 2 of the 4 rivets on the door: the forward and middle one.  I’ll wait a good few days for the flox to really cure before doing the other ones.  I also replaced a cowl-side hinge soft rivet that was a little proud of the surface as well.

There was just a tad flow of flox from mounting the door to the hinge, with both of those secured in the closed position… but a little gentle prying on the aft side of the door popped it right open.

I then closed the door and secured it with the wire securing latch, and yes this is actually a pic of that to show my oil check door seating is no longer all cattywhompus.

After a good deal of assessment and some test runs, I then bent the wire 90° and trimmed it just under 1.5″ long.  I welded a semicircular push-pull tab onto the wire and then primed and painted the tab.

I had to run out and pick up my friend’s daughter and take her back to her house, and also stopped by the grocery store for some stuff on the way back.  This gave the yellow paint a good bit to dry, and I carefully tested out the oil check door wire securing “latch” operation… I’m happy to report that it worked a treat!

With my oil check door wire securing “latch” operationally good, I then proceeded to tack weld a small safety tab in position to keep the wire from exiting too far out the aft end of the cowling into the prop.  Well, that was the goal of this task.

Between a slight rock of the welding table —which I remedied— and then having to work the TIG welder pedal while standing, I had an issue with the pedal snagging up on the table crossbar as I was cycling the pedal up and down during my welding.  Although I wasn’t getting a good burst on the tack weld, after a couple of cycles the metal was warmed up.  Then the pedal final came off its crossbar snag, let loose, and went “full throttle” on the warm wire —blasting it in half.

I then spent a good 15 minutes of improvisational welding to get the wire set back into position… resulting in ugly but hopefully strong welds to secure it back in position!  What a PITA!

Here’s my final <ugly> safety tab/GLOB weld on the oil check door securing wire.

Now, over the past week I’ve been pondering how to secure the aft end bent push-pull wire to the inside of the top cowling as both a safety measure so that it doesn’t work its way aft (or release the oil check door), and to keep down on vibrational chatter on the side of the cowl.

I decided to go with a simple clip that the wire snaps into when the oil check door is secured closed.  That resulted in an assessment on whether that clip should be metal or composite.  I landed on simply laying up 3 plies of carbon fiber to create a securing clip (think tape measure belt clip) on the inside side wall of the top cowling.

Here’s that layup with a taped metal block to keep the carbon fiber pressed down to the underlying mold.

As you can see, I laid up the carbon fiber (using hi-temp HTR-212 epoxy) and then peel plied the layup.

I also hit the yellow tab with a couple more coats using a brush.  I then left the layup and paint to cure overnight.

Tomorrow I’m attending an event with Jess that will eat up most of the day, and then after that my week should open up to get more stuff done! (hopefully).

I started out today by spending a bit of time straightening and angling the flat piece of the hinge that mounts to the oil check door (part with rivet holes).  The hinge gap on this flat piece towards the aft end of the door was a bit more than the front side, which was pretty much pressed firmly against the door.  Again, since the hinge is aluminum getting mounted to carbon fiber, I needed a buffer piece of BID in between to keep any galvanic corrosion from occurring over time.

So I simple added a couple of BID plies and stepped them so that they were thicker on the aft end, at the very slight gap betwixt door hinge and door (I actually added a triangular filler ply of BID, so officially 4 plies at the very aft end).  After wetting out the BID, I then slathered on some as-wet-as-feasible flox and floxed the hinge back onto the oil check door.  I’ll note that the hinge spring is in place, and since the door wire catch was in place as well as the door being firmly taped closed with Gorilla duct tape… installing that spring was no small feat!

I let the epoxy/flox cure for about 30 minutes as I cleaned up the excess oozing flox from around the flat hinge piece edges.  With the hinge refloxed to the door, I mounted the top cowl with all the CAMLOCS and screws installed and again placed weights on the oil check door to keep it as tightly pressed to the top cowling as possible.  I then left it to cure.

I spent the next couple of hours slowly dialing in the fit of the prop spinner by carefully removing any material that kept it from seating on the flow guide properly, or didn’t allow enough clearance with the respective prop blades.

Once the prop spinner prop blade opening clearances were good, I got to work on the front-of-blade gap filler pieces.  I had assumed (yes, we all know what “assume” means!) improperly that my buddy Dave Berenholtz would be using a Silver Bullet, and/or never gave it any serious thought.  The bottom line is while he has the same prop spinner, his prop configuration is such that the gap filler piece is much narrower than mine.

Since I based my dimensions off of his, my resulting 9-ply gap filler piece stock layup ended up being too narrow and too tall overall.  It should have been about an inch less in height and about 2.5″ wider.  Nonetheless, I could clearly get at least one of the  front-of-blade gap filler pieces out of it, so after finalizing the template I marked up the first one (pic 1) and cut it out (pic 2).

The longer side of this gap filler piece (lower in pic below) did not work out well on the first side, and with the overall opening just a hair narrower (about 0.050″) on the other side, I transferred the #1 gap filler piece above to the other side (#2) and fitted it into place.

Now, although the spinner curves a bit more as it departs the junction with the flow guide, I decided to check out how the other front-of-blade gap filler piece would turn out by simply cutting it out of my 9-ply stock… only in reverse to keep it as close to the front side of the stock as possible.  Thus, I marked up the second (new #1) prop gap filler piece.

And cut it out and fitted it into place.  Not perfect, but not bad.  Which is the exact descriptor that I will offer up for this entire prop spinner install effort.

Here we have the prop spinner installed, with the prop blade openings cut with good (or too good… read on) clearances.

And the requisite direct aft pic.  With the top cowl mounted this shot shows the actual clearance between top cowl and prop spinner flow guide: again, 3/8″.

Hindsight is always 20/20, and knowing the results now I would have approached the final prop spinner fitting a bit differently, focusing all the trimming on the right side of the blade in the first pic below.  Let me explain: with the screws installed, I would have then shifted the entire prop spinner counterclockwise to close up the slightly wider gap on the right side of the blade.  No, it won’t break the bank, but it is slightly wider than I desired. Pic 2 is a shot of the other side.

That being said, for some reason the 4 pre-installed mounting screw positions are all #6 screws, while included in the kit were #8 screws and platenuts.  Since I’ll be swapping out the #6 screws for #8 prop spinner mounting screws I plan to bias the holes CCW by about 0.02-0.03″ to balance out the clearance gaps around both prop blades.

Now, THAT all being said, here we have a wider angle shot of today’s activities: newly reset oil check door (hopefully comes out set as it should be on the cowling!) and installed prop spinner!

Tomorrow I’ve got a morning phone call with a good friend of mine, rolling into taking my little buddy to a county fair, and ending with an evening out with Jess…. so no more than checking the oil check door cure is in cards I imagine.  Sunday I’ll again be playing chauffeur to my little buddy for a round trip to her friends’ house (reminder: her mother had foot surgery and can’t drive).  So another somewhat impacted build day.

Nonetheless, pressing forward!

It’s been a slow couple of build days and I’m hoping to get some more solid work time in the shop, albeit more social events coming this weekend and Monday (sigh).

I was able to get a rather intricate task knocked out in the cutting of the prop blade notches in the Catto carbon fiber prop spinner.

I started by aligning the prop blade notch template with 2 of the 4 screw holes that are currently installed on the prop spinner and flow guide… the screws visible on each lower, outer edge in the pic below.  With my cut line known, I then placed green painters tape under the cut outline of the template to draw my cut line.

Here we have the cut line marked on the prop spinner, again spaced on 2 of the 4 pre-existing screw mounting holes (pic 1).  I then used the Fein saw to cut out the first of two prop blade cutouts for my Hertzler Silver Bullet prop (pic 2).

It took a good 45 minutes (yes, that long!) of measuring and aligning the second prop blade cutout in relation to the first, while simultaneously keeping it “centered” and aligned with the last 2 of 4 pre-existing screw mounting holes.

When I finally took the plunge, uh, literally, with my Fein saw to cut out the second and final prop blade cutout/notch, I had my fingers crossed (and a quick prayer) that my measurements were right.  Yep, measure 17 times and cut once . . . and Voila!

I was fully aware that my prop blade notches would most likely be tighter than they will be in final configuration, but better to remove material on final fitting than having to add eh?!

Moreover, I’ll note that in all these gratuitous installed prop spinner pics that the top cowling is NOT mounted in any way, and is merely loosely placed in position.

Here’s one more side shot to provide a general idea of how the prop spinner will look once finally installed.

Ok, tomorrow I am planning to get some good progress on both prop spinner final configuration AND oil check door hinge-to-door reattachment.

Limping along….

I started out today by pulling the weights off the freshly floxed in place oil check door securing tube on the inside/underside of the door.  Thankfully when I pulled the weights off the door, it stayed in place… nice ‘n flush with the surrounding top cowl surface.

I pulled the wire out from the securing tubes and pulled the oil check door off the cowling.  Yeah, it’s not pretty, but it seems to be in the right spot to keep the door shut tightly into/onto the top cowling.

I mixed up some more epoxy, added some flox in a few key areas around the tube and then filled the remaining bigger gaps with dry micro.  I cut and laid up 2 plies of carbon fiber across the tube and peel plied the layup.  I set it aside to cure overnight.

I grabbed the molds I made of the forward side of the prop spinner to specifically use them as templates for cutting out the prop notches in the real spinner.  Using my cardboard template I transferred the notch opening to the first spinner template (pic 1) and then cut the notch (pic 2).  I’ll note, and as you can see, the templates are in 2 separate halves.

I then set the template in place around the prop blade and taped it to the flow guide.

I spent nearly 2 hours slowly dialing in the prop notch opening on this spinner template.  As I suspected, transferring the opening from a flat, albeit curved, cardboard template to this template with all kinds of curves going on made for some required adjustments (thus the green tape for back filling the edge).

Getting closer… (It’s an iterative process!)

Once I got pretty darn close on the first half template, I took about 20 minutes measuring the outer diameter to get as close to 180° out on the second template as possible.  I then marked up the second template and cut it out as well.

I noted these templates are of the OUTER surface of the prop spinner, so while they are great for getting the general shape and spacing of the prop blade notches configured, they are not exactly the size required.  In short, I’ll be cutting the notches on the actual prop spinner a little smaller and then work through the process of widening those out in situ around the prop blades.

Overall not a bad outing, although it took way longer than I thought it would to dial in these prop blade notches.  It was getting late and I wanted to hit it fresh again tomorrow as I hope to take the plunge and get the actual prop spinner notched and installed.

That being said, I got a request from my friend to take her to an appointment tomorrow down in Wilmington.  This is going to wipe out the majority of my shop time tomorrow, but I’ll do what I can.

Pressing forward… or trying to at least.

I had another social event that kept me out of the shop for nearly half the day, but I was still able to get some stuff knocked out.

First off, the top cowling’s oil check door has been a gnawing issue since after I set the door in place and attached it to the hinge.  The hinge construction gives it very little flex, and with the door having compound curves, attaching it to the hinge assembly greatly disrupted the door’s contour and how it flowed with the surface of the cowling.

Over the past few days I’ve been assessing and resetting how the door is secured to the cowling, but those are just symptoms —albeit important— but the core of the issue was the door-to-hinge attachment.  I had to remedy that to remedy any further oil check door fitting issues.

So I drilled out all the rivets and hit the hinge assemble with the heat gun enough to allow me to pry the hinge off the door.  I then heated up the door a bit and flexed it back into its original position, which it seemed amenable to.

I then put the oil check door back into position on the top cowling, weighed it down (note the aft inboard corner specifically getting weighed down as well) and heated it up a good bit with the heat gun.

I then took my friend’s daughter out for a late lunch and went to an arcade for about 4 hours.

Upon my return I removed the weights off the oil check door and was pleased to see that it was pretty much back to original shape and configuration… as in NOT all wonky in relation to the upper cowling.

After some more checks I realized that even though I had reset the forward and aft securing wire tubes attached to the top cowling, now the door was a little proud due to the door’s attached crosstube.  In short, something had to give and I figured I would attack the one remaining tube and get this oil check door snugged up tight —on the outboard side at least— in its position on the cowling.

With my Fein saw and Dremel tool I proceeded to remove nearly all of the cross tube attached on the underside of the oil check door.  I confirmed that the forward tube alignment was good and snug, it was just the aft side causing the door to sit a little proud, or high.

Now, I took a bit of gamble here in that I was working in the blind on resetting the door’s cross tube in place with flox.  Yet another reason I kept the front side attached.  I greased up the securing wire and added flox to the door’s cross tube before setting it in place and running the wire through all the securing tubes.  This has the door secured in its position [sans hinge] with the door cross tube floxed into position.  Then, to ensure the door tube cures with the oil check door as tightly in position as possible to the cowling, I weighed down the door again… and also that aft inboard corner as well.

I then left the door to cure overnight.

My goal for today was to get the prop spinner cut for the prop blades and have it on the bird, but that didn’t happen.  I did lay the groundwork though by getting a good start on creating the blade cutout template, with this being my first attempt.

I then refined my prop spinner blade hole cutout template with version #2.  Here I actually have the cutout configured to allow the spinner to get mounted around the prop blades.  Since I had taped thin cardboard to the prop blades to protect them during this process, I needed to get the clearance gaps pretty tight up next to the taped blade surface…

Which I was better able to do with template version #3.  It was getting quite late in the evening, and tomorrow I’ll pull the cardboard from the prop blades and simply use only tape before doing my final template version.

This shot of the prop spinner cutout template version #3 also provides a good shot of the “razor” trimmed 3-ply carbon fiber layup that I just completed, and the top cowl aft edge sanding that it allowed me to do.  Except for a few small spots, I’m back to 3/8″ clearance between spinner flow guide and cowling.

My final task of the evening was making up a template for the front-of-prop-blade gap filler piece that will cover that exposed area.   Here’s version #1.

Followed by version #2, which offers a bit more coverage of the gap.  I’m sure there’s a few more versions of these templates before I take the ‘knife’ to the prop spinner.

But it was late, so I called it a night.

Pressing forward!

I got a late start today having returned from Wilmington mid-afternoon and then having to give my friend’s daughter a ride to some of her friends’ house.

But I did get another round of tweaking the top cowl oil check door in… by getting the aft door securing wire tube marked (pic 1) and then cut out (pic 2).

With the door set back as firmly closed as possible, and secured in place with Gorilla duct tape (no spring!) I then proceeded to reset the wire-securing brass tube in place with flox.  I then covered that all up with 2 plies of carbon fiber, and peel plied the layup.

The clamp is to keep the wire pressed down against the inside top of the cowling, as I have the wire reversed and inserted just enough to keep the door configuration set.

I had cut out 3 plies of carbon fiber a couple of days ago in my assessing how to get as much clearance as possible with my current top cowling-to-prop spinner configuration.

At this point, the only options I really have left is a radical top cowl backend rebuild, or a more finessed approach of adding a few plies on top to then remove a few plies on the bottom… or actuality simply sanding the inside edge at a beveled angle to remove a good 0.06-0.08″ of cowling edge to keep it away from my prop spinner.  That should get me back to about a 0.36″ gap… which is about as good as I’m going to squeeze out of this setup.

In my quest to continually add more weight to this bird, I also addressed the meeting point (AKA “firewall”) of the sharp colliding angles of the canopy/D-deck on the forward side (left in pic below) and the aft flange that is aligned with the flow of the top cowl. It’s not too bad on the right, but on the left side I have a decent little dip, or trench, that I don’t want to simply trowel in a thick trough of micro.  I decided a judicious application of glass here would be good to fill the trough a bit, then allow the micro to be used in its clean-up role.

Here’s the firewall-located dip on the turtledeck:

I grabbed a small length of 3″ wide UNI spar cap tape, cut off 6″ long by about half the width of the tape (1.5″).  I then split that into thirds and cut 1/3 to to 4.5″ long and the last 1/3 to 3″ long (sorry, I should have grabbed a pic).  I pre-pregged the UNI so that ALL the ends started at one side [thick at bottom, narrow at top] and then wet it out.  In addition, I cut a single ply of BID about 6.7″ long x 1.5″ wide to cover the UNI.

Once the UNI strands were wet out, I laid them up in the trough, got them oriented and smoothed out fairly even, then covered them with the 1 ply of BID.  I then peel plied the layup.

I was trying to get to work on the prop spinner to get it cut to allow mounting over the prop and secured to the flow guide.  I was able to get the prop taped up to protect it as I shape the prop spinner, with the upcoming requisite on & off iterations.  But alas, I ran out of time since I needed to go pick up my friend’s daughter and take her back home, and then run to Jess’s place for dinner.

I added this shot above not just to display my masterful tape job, but also if you look on the top right of the prop hub you’ll see a bit of a delam.  The bottom left looks about the same.  There was a minor one on the top left that I hit with some epoxy and peel plied it, then tape.  This was after I sent these pics to Gary Hertzler, in requesting his advice on how to remedy these delams.  He responded that I should simply use epoxy under the delam (as pretty much any other delam) and keep it closed up during cure.

So I loaded up my delam/air bubble syringe with white vinegar and once cleaned out, I’ll attack these delams after I get the prop spinner configured.

I finally got a decent chunk of stuff done today, and of course getting a bit of progress under my belt is motivating in getting this bird done!

That being said, my first quick task was to create a plan for dealing with the gaps I have in the front corners of the top cowling where the cowling itself fails to cover the gap between the wing edge and the cowling mounting/CAMLOC flange of the CS spar: the approximate 2.5″ along the outboard edge just aft of the corner, again on each side.  Now, I could fill this gap line with RTV once the wings are on the bird, but I want a more permanent seal and a better look than that.  Yes, this task is a bit cosmetic in nature here, but it also clearly concerns minimizing the loss of any engine cooling air.

Thus, my plan is to take away a bit of the cowl mounting flange and add that flange piece to the wing edge, extending the wing flange forward along that edge, but only around 0.3-0.4″ in width.  A bit hard to explain, but more to come on this.

On the oil check door configuration, I realized that it was NOT just the aft top cowl attach point that needed repositioned, but also the forward one as well (bottom of pic).  So I marked it up and took it outside to cut it out for resetting…

which I did here.

I then installed the top cowl oil check door without the hinge spring, taped the door tightly in place, and then set the door-securing wire in place.  I then added a dab of grease in the forward brass wire capture tube and slid it into place before adding flox all around it.

I then laid up 2 plies of carbon fiber over the reset oil check door wire-securing tube.  And peel plied the layup of course.

Before I mixed up the MGS 335 epoxy with fast hardener for all that going on above, I cut out 3 plies of BID to help fill in a right side gap on the front top cowling attach lip on the D-deck.  After laying that up I peel plied it as well.

I then carefully mounted my Hertzler Silver Bullet prop onto the bird to not only allow for cutting and installing the prop spinner, but to also ensure I had it configured with the blades at the 12/6 o’clock positions with the #1 cylinder at TDC.

My ignorance of how exactly to find TDC for the #1 cylinder came to light when I lined up the “TC1” line on the AFT side of the flywheel with the engine case split line.  “Uh, Houston we have a problem!” and “Strange things are afoot at the Circle K!” both came to mind since looking through the top spark plug hole proved that the #1 cylinder was anything BUT at TDC.

After some research I discovered by way of my RV friends on the VANs forum that I was in fact looking for the “TC1” line on the FRONT side of the flywheel, which brought the prop blades to exactly 12/6 o’clock with the #1 cylinder at TDC . . .

And put the AFT side flywheel “TC1” mark near the starter, which is what that mark is used for… ok, now we’re cooking with real butter!

Although the prop will be installed temporarily for only a bit, I also took the opportunity to check the blade alignment as is spelled out in the plans.  With blade #1 down, I made a mark on some green painters tape just below it, then rotated blade #1 up and blade #2 down in position.  Here is the result: well within the 1/16″ difference allowed by the Long-EZ engine plans.

Since I used fast hardener, I pulled the peel ply off to check the forward wire-securing tube for the top cowl oil check door.

I also pulled the peel ply, razor-trimmed the cured overhanging BID and re-drilled the CAMLOC hole for the right side D-deck top cowl mounting flange.

I would say tomorrow I’ll get back on the top cowl and prop, but I’m leaving tomorrow morning for a quick overnight trip to Wilmington, NC for a little R&R with Jess.  I’ll be back Sunday midday and will get back to work then.