Today I started off by pulling the peel ply from the 1-ply BID layups securing the gear fairings to the main gear legs.  I also removed the 1/32″ spacers that provided a gap during the fairing install that will result in the gear fairings “floating” above the surface of the painted fuselage with just enough of a gap to allow for gear movement without damaging the paint or surface of the fuselage… at least that’s the goal.

Mike Beasley employed this method of installing his gear fairing and he’s reported that after a good year+ of flying his Long-EZ that he has no damage or scuffing on the fuselage.

Here’s the other side.

And a couple shots from the front side.

I then spent nearly 45 minutes taping the fuselage all around the gear legs/fairings in prep for both sanding and microing up the legs.

I gave the freshly cured BID that secures the fairings to the gear legs a good sanding, as well as the top of the gear legs (bottom as situated here).

Originally I had planned on only finishing the bottom of the gear legs, so only sanded that area.  I quickly realized how silly of an idea that was so today I sanded down all the surfaces of the main gear.

I then got to work micro’ing up the gear legs.  I used regular micro with about 30% West 410 added to the mix.  This ratio really does seem to work the best in all the iterations that I’ve tried.

Also note the black electrical tape around the perimeter of the gear fairing.  Just as I did on the canopy frame, once I applied all the micro finish to the gear legs, I then pulled the black electrical tape to leave a very clean, micro-free edge around the gear fairings.

Again, just like the recent canopy frame and the aft nose/avionics cover micro finishes, it’s really cool to see the splotchy, multi-colored, irregular surfaces get smoothed out and in one solid color.  Clearly that changes a bit during the cycles of sanding and priming, but it’s a cool process to take these components to paint.

One last shot of the freshly micro’d gear legs.

Tomorrow I plan on removing the wings and taking this bird outside to sand down the micro on the gear legs, and then rolling right into epoxy wipes.

Today was all about getting the main gear fairings installed.  Following the example of the brilliant and benevolent Mike Beasley, I cut up a bunch of cardboard 1/32″ (0.031″) spacers.

Using painters tape I then secured the spacers a few inches apart underneath the edge of each gear fairing.

After painting on a thin application of epoxy to the mating areas on the gear, I then applied flox to the gear leg and slid each gear fairing down into place, so that it rested on the 1/32″ cardboard spacers.

I then taped and clamped the gear fairings in place to ensure the edge was nice and tight against the gear… to result in the smoothest transition as possible from fairing to gear leg. I then left the flox to cure.

I then started work on reinstalling the nose gear actuator.

After a number of canard aircraft pre-buy inspections, Marc Zeitlin has reported some issues with the Jack Wilhelmson EZLift nose gear actuator securing pivot bolts coming loose.  It’s been an active thread periodically on the Cozy discussion boards.  Various cures to these ails have included Jack’s new pivot pins with star washers (on hand), Nord Lock washers to secure the pivot bolts in place (on hand), and ANH5-12A drilled head bolts to secure with safety wire (on hand).

However, when I was reading the original install instructions, I ran across something interesting where it stated that if you swap out the bolts, ensure they are the same length. If too long they can hit the internal threaded screw and lock up the actuator.  I would surmise that this would result in damage as well…

I do have the same size replacement bolts on hand, just with drilled heads for safety wire. But the Nord Lock washers (light blue arrows) present a potential problem, since they are much thinner than the original split ring and standard washer pair… about 0.1″ difference between the two setups.

Hmmm… what to do?  So I called Jack.  He said that the issue was that there is a slight pivot of about 5º each direction as the nose gear transits up and down.  Moreover, if there is a slight misalignment during install it will cause one or both bolts to slowly loosen up due to this pivoting action.

Thus, the Nord Lock washers —designed to really lock down a bolt against vibration— are not the best suited for this application, and also why there is a split ring washer in the mix. Jack did think safety-wiring was the best option to keep the bolts in place, as even with the slight pivot action occurring there would be just a hair enough give in the wire to allow for the minute movements required.

Between the spacing issue and actually too good of gripping action with the Nord Lock washers, I pulled them from the lineup and went back to using the original flat and split ring washer setup.  I am still using Jack’s upgraded pivot bolt pins with star washers, and the drilled bolt heads for safety wiring (the bolts in the pic below are actually the same length, just angled in different directions).

With my hardware squared away I then prepped everything to reinstall the nose gear actuator back into the nose of the plane.  However, I then encountered a clearance problem with the NG3/4 bracket catching the edge lip on the nose gear actuator arm. Essentially the NG3 that wraps around the nose gear strut protrudes about 3/16″ farther aft than the interior NG4 bracket and is catching the lip on the actuator arm.  It did this very slightly before, but after remounting the NG3/4 brackets with industrial adhesive it is pronounced enough to block the insertion of the actuator arm.

I didn’t grab any pics of this, but will.  I’ll ponder on my corrective actions and will report back in another day or two.

With the flox still curing on the main gear fairings install, I then grabbed the epoxy-wiped aft nose/avionics cover and took it outside for a good sanding.  I spent almost an hour sanding it down in prep for minor surface refills and primer.

After it dried from the wet sanding, I saw a few more spots I need to hit.  But for the most part this thing is ready for next steps.

Nearly 8 hours later I pulled the tape and clamps off the floxed in place main gear fairings.

I cleaned up the excess flox and then sanded down the fairing edges at the seam with the gear leg surface.

I then cut a single ply of BID about 2″ wide and laid it up over the seam on each gear fairing, with a minor bit of flox at the transition between fairing and gear leg.  I then peel plied the layups.

Here’s another shot of the 1 ply layups securing the gear fairings to the main gear legs.

I then left the gear fairing glass to cure and called it a night.

Before I flip the fuselage back upright I plan on having the black accent stripe that borders the bottom fuselage blue paint complete, as well as the white paint on the strake and fuselage/nose sides.

These upcoming colors —white & black— traverse across the GIB strake windows and thus I want the window edges to be in their final state before pressing forward on the application of these paint colors.

Starting off, the GIB windows needed some TLC… here we have the right one.  The left looked pretty much the same.

I started off by cleaning up the edges and removing the foam to get a sanding block down in there to shape the sides.  Again, here’s the right side.

And here’s the left side.

To ensure my GIB strake window cutouts matched the window pieces, I grabbed my template and taped it in place.  Apparently I had some glass creep inward from when I glassed the bottom of the strake and my initial glass skin removal from the window area.

I then outlined the internal edge of the template onto the surface of the strake with a fine mechanical pencil.

I then used my Fein saw to carefully cut just inside the inner edge of the lines, on both strakes, and then finished the edges with sanding blocks.  All told, I spent over 2 hours on these strake windows, but voila… GIB strake windows’ external edges ready for paint.

I then pulled the 1/4″-wide blue fine line tape along the edge of the fuselage/nose bottom blue paint to design and lay out the edge of the black accent stripe that will border the existing blue paint on the bottom of the fuselage/nose and strake. The rate of widening from the nose is 1/2″ approximately every 24″.

As with the blue, the black accent stripe will flow off of the fuselage and onto the strake.

Here’s a side shot of the border for the black accent stripe.  It will be another day or two before I get to painting the black stripe, so I let this design germinate a bit in my mind before pulling the trigger.  I may rework the fuselage-strake corner just a hair . . . Also, to be clear I taped up this accent stripe on both sides of the plane.

I then took a break from the fuselage to use the last little bit of daylight left outside of the shop to spend about an hour sanding down the second coat of blue paint on the canopy frame.  I also sanded down the nose gear fairing since it had gotten a few hairs on its surface and just needed a refresh/do-over.

I then mixed up some blue paint and applied the 3rd coat to the canopy, another coat to the nose gear fairing and a few minor touchup spots on the fuselage: one spot right above the right gear leg that actually extends out from underneath the fairing.  The aft edge of the forward nose gear pocket.  And a spot right near the taxi light that I missed when painting the final coat.  All together these fuselage/nose touchups were less than 2.5 square inches.

I will note that although I clean the surface and use a tack rag before every application of paint, on the canopy frame little 1/4-1/2″ black hairs kept showing up all over the front area.  I would pick the hairs out and then re-tip the paint, but as it got dryer my tipping caused a bit of a rough surface.  The bottom line is that I will have to do yet another coat of blue paint on the canopy frame.

After the blue paint, I then mixed up some white primer and applied it the nose, fuselage sides and strakes.  Again, on both sides.

I then left the paint and primer to cure and called it a night.

Since I was up fairly late last night I had planned on cheese grating the micro finish on the aft nose/avionics cover before I headed in for the evening.  But I forgot, then fell out, so I started on it first thing this morning.  I’ve observed in the past that although 3-6 hours is around the optimum time to cheese grate micro finish, it can still be fairly easily cheese grated within the next 24 hours… definitely 12 hours is within the window.

So I spent a good 45 minutes cheese grating the micro on the aft nose/avionics cover.  I couldn’t really get in close on the micro piled up on the inboard elevator fairings, so I grabbed a piece of 36 grit sandpaper and went to work on those.

What I discovered was that the micro had cured and was sanding just fine.  I went ahead then and spent well over 2 more hours sanding down the micro to contour it.  I then cleaned off the micro finish and immediately applied the first epoxy wipe [see way below].

I then got to work wet sanding the white paint on the underside of the wings.  This took about 45 minutes per wing.

I used mainly 500 grit sandpaper, but in some of the stubborn spots I used 400 grit. As you can see in these pics, I also removed all the tape and paper that protected the fuselage and strake whilst painting the blue paint on the underside of fuselage and nose.

By this point in the day it was starting to get dark, but I powered through and took the bottom cowling outside and wet sanded it out there.

There are a few spots I missed that I will have to go back over, but for the most part it’s ready for its final coat of blue paint… which again, it won’t get until after I mount and marry up the upper cowling to this guy.  What it will get though is about the first foot of the black accent strip just to establish where that will be.  I’ll then dial in the exact paint scheme on both the top and bottom cowlings when both are installed.

I then grabbed some shots of the mostly cured bottom fuselage/nose blue paint. At this point I had not yet pulled the blue colored fine line tape at the edge of the blue paint.

I will say that the color and shininess of the paint is stunning, but it truly is one of those paint jobs that looks awesome from greater than 6′ away.  It really needs some TLC in very fine grade sanding, buffing and polishing to get rid of both the dust specs and a few paint runs… and to generally smooth out the surface a good bit more.

That all being said, I’m super happy with the color and I’m definitely learning the paint nuances a bit more.

My swoosh on the lower side of the fuselage is is not exactly how I designed my original paint scheme in that it is rounder and lower than what was in my original depiction, shown here.

The original swoosh above was definitely a longer one that was “flatter” in that it was more horizontal than the one I ended up with.  It also was a bit farther forward on the fuselage side than what I have now.

I did the swoosh slightly different to keep it lower on the fuselage so that the bordering black accent stripe would be out of the sun pert near all the time. Plus, I liked the idea of a narrower spike-style bottom blue stripe… in my mind I lessened the curb appeal just a tad with the curvier, farther aft swoosh when the bird is on the ramp, but will have a better look when flying and viewed from below.  Rationalization and fantasy are key on these things… ha!

The main thing is that it is getting done and I’m quickly progressing towards getting this bird flipped back upright and getting it finished (read: in the air!).

Just as I was going to cheese grate the micro late last night and didn’t get to it, I had also planned on doing 5 full epoxy wipes on the aft nose/avionics cover… but alas, I ended up crashing out again and only got 4 epoxy wipes in the bag.  Oh, well.  All is good.

I do have just a few divots that I don’t think the epoxy wipes filled, which is why I had intended on doing 5 wipes total.  I will probably have to do a few surface fills before I primer it.  I will most likely only do one coat of primer since I may have to sand down and add more filler as I match up and mate this cover to the nose, canopy, canard, etc.

Finally, with the blue paint cured enough that it won’t act like super glue, I was able to finally close the door on the freshly blue painted milling machine CNC control box.  It was quite serendipitous that I had some extra paint and was able to knock this out… but I love this color and it really spiffy’s up the control box!

And with that, I called it a night…

Today I started by knocking out a comparatively quick micro finishing application on the aft nose/avionics cover. Before I started I snagged one last shot of the cover in its unfinished state.

I then mixed up a fair bit of straight micro (as compared to adding West 410 filler) and slathered it onto the aft nose/avionics cover.

I then got busy painting the final blue coat on the fuselage, as well as the 2nd coat of blue paint on the canopy frame… both shown here.

Another shot of the canopy frame in its 2nd coat of blue paint.

And a shot of the bottom of the nose and fuselage in its final coat of blue paint.

Some shots of the aft bottom fuselage in its final coat of blue paint.

I didn’t recoat the landing brake depression in the bottom of the fuselage, since it currently has 2 coats of blue paint… which I determined is enough for it.

As before, I painted the final coat of blue on the nose hatch door, nose gear fairing, and nose gear doors.

As I also did on the RAM air scoop/hell hole hatch cover and the landing brake.

Although I mixed up the same amount of blue paint as I did the last round, I had a good bit left over… I guess I must be finally learning to lay down the paint in lighter coats!  So what to do with it?

I didn’t want to waste the extra blue paint, so I quickly sanded and cleaned the milling machine CNC control box before applying the excess paint to it.

After painting the CNC control box door, I wedged a piece of steel bar into the latch and set it in the open position as I painted the rest of the control box.

With even more blue paint left in the cup, I quickly cleaned up the old rusty shop electrical box and applied a good coat of blue paint on it as well.

I then left all the blue painted components to cure overnight.

I started out today by taping up the canopy edge (with its intersection of the frame) with duct tape in prep for sanding the first coat of blue paint. I then pulled the tape from the canopy hinges to do a final cleanup on those before I moved into the final coats of paint on the canopy frame.

I then spent nearly 5 hours wet sanding the bottom fuselage/nose and canopy frame in prep for paint.

The fuselage sanding of course involved working the bottom of the fuselage (mid-sanding pic here) to prep it for its final coat of blue paint.

As you can see, I then worked the canopy frame even more, with quite a bit more white primer showing through the initial coat of blue paint.  I also filled a couple of very minor holes along the edge of the canopy frame hinges (one front, one aft) before taping up the canopy hinges.

I also did some extensive sanding on the edge of the canopy towards the front on the left side of the frame to dial in the contour.

Here we have the aft end fo the fuselage and strake sanded in prep for the final coat of blue paint.  I had some breakthroughs in the paint back to the primer coat, but for the most part these breakthroughs were minimal.

I also wet sanded the nose hatch door, nose gear fairing and nose gear doors in prep for final blue paint.  Note that I also countersunk the screw holes in the nose gear fairing and gear doors for the screws just prior to the final coat of blue paint.

Finally, I wet sanded the landing brake and RAM air scoop/hell hole hatch cover for their final coat of blue paint.

I had planned to paint the final coat of blue on the fuselage and all these components (except for the canopy frame, which will require at least one more coat), but the sanding took longer than I expected and I didn’t finish until later in the evening, so I will paint it all tomorrow.

Since I didn’t start painting tonight, I figured I would get one more fairly quick task knocked out: the filling of some delams in the pour foam of the aft nose/avionics cover. Actually, I only found one delam/air pocket initially but after some coin tapping I found a couple more. I’ll do one final check tomorrow to ensure I found all the delams in this apparently lackluster pour foam fill.

With that, I left the aft nose/avionics cover epoxy-filled delam voids to cure and called it a night.

Today I finished sanding and prepping the underside of the wings in prep for paint.

I then mixed up some white paint and applied it the bottom of the wings using the roll & tip method.

Within the next 24-48 hours I’ll sand this paint coat and will then let the wings cure for another day or two before removing them.

Later on when the top of the wings and leading edges are micro finished and primed, I will then apply another coat of white over this one as the rest of the wing surfaces are painted.

This wing painting was pretty much all I did today.  Tomorrow I’ll sand down the blue painted sections and repaint them with the final coat of blue.

With the white primer curing on both the canopy frame and the minor Metal Glaze spot fills on the fuselage, it gave me time to tackle some other tasks starting off this morning.

First off was a bit of glasswork.  A to-do item on my task list for some time was to mend some oops’s I made when I cut out the extra layer of wood & glass with the Fein saw on the inside of the aft nose/avionics cover.  I broke through in about 6 spots total, all slices averaging from about a 1/4″ to 1″ in length.  I also had one spot to repair where I cracked it just a bit too when I was scraping out the excess wood and glass on the inside.

Here are a couple shots of the accidental breakthrough cuts showing on the top of the aft nose/avionics cover.  I’ll note that these are only on the exterior of the cover since the inside has long been filled with pour foam and re-glassed.

I then dug around in my spare glass box and found a perfect long thin piece of UNI to use as repair patches.  I want some glass to bridge these cuts but the thinner the better for finishing purposes.

I then laid up the UNI patches and peel plied them.  Task complete!

I then got to work on my milling machine CNC capability for a bit.  I started off by finding the stepper motor cables (2 per) and hooking those up to get an idea of how I would run and secure them.

Next up was the control box.  I needed to make a decision on how it would get mounted to the wall, and I actually reversed my previous decision and flipped ends for what would be the top.

I then inventoried all my ports, cable passthroughs, switches, etc. that would need to get mounted to the control box.

I also assessed & planned out the layout of the components inside the control box as well.

Finally, after not being able to locate my wiring diagrams for the milling machine CNC control box, I decided to simply print them out.  I haven’t used my printer for 11×17 sheets in quite a while so the printouts look a little raspy… but usable.

A bit later the canopy frame white primer was ready for sanding, so I spent another good hour + final contouring it in prep for paint.

I then removed the protective duct tape and underlying painters tape around the edge of the canopy where it abuts the frame.  Once again I spent a good 45 minutes very carefully cleaning up the edge and removing minute bits of excess tape.

With no show-stopping blemishes on the surface of the canopy frame or around the edge, I then re-taped the edge of the canopy at the frame with painters tape in prep for paint.

After sanding down the small dollops of white primer on the fuselage and prepping it for paint, I mixed up some blue paint and started painting… using the roll and tip method on all surfaces.

Since I’m discussing the canopy I’ll show it in blue paint although I painted it second after the fuselage.

I didn’t mix up enough paint for all the parts, so after painting the fuselage I decided I had just enough to finish the canopy frame next… although it was just a tad thin/dry.  Although that still didn’t stop the runs in some spots. Crazy!

I have to say for the record that tipping the paint generates far better results than without. However, that doesn’t mean the results were perfect…

especially on the sides of the fuselage where I still had a few issues with runs even though I was diligent —or so I thought <sigh>— in keeping the paint thick enough to cover evenly, but not too thick to run after I tipped it.

Here we have new coats of rolled & tipped blue paint on the landing brake and the RAM air scoop/hell hole hatch cover… after I mixed up another batch of blue paint.

I then rolled and tipped the blue paint on the nose hatch door, nose gear fairing and nose gear doors.

I love the blue color of this paint and how it looks… from 10′ away.  I have to say I’m not thrilled with how this paint levels out while curing… or technically doesn’t level out.

Although the surface is exponentially better by adding the tipping method to the rolling, in some parts it’s not a huge improvement.  Some of that is my inexperience with rolling and tipping to be sure, but I think some tweaks will need to be made to my process to enhance how this paint goes on.  In addition, I still feel that a final sand, polish and buff-out ala traditional auto paint will be required to get nice smooth surface along with the gloss shine.

I then wet sanded the white primer on the underside of the wings with 500 grit sandpaper. I have to say that I learned yet another hard lesson in that I should have sanded the primer on the underside wing surfaces to its final texture before it cured to a much tougher surface.

By the time I got this tough sanding knocked out (although I do have a number of spots to do final re-sands), then taped off the surface edges for paint, it was just too late to start painting.  I plan on knocking out this paint job first thing out the gate tomorrow.

With that, I left the blue paint to cure and called it a night.

I started off today by filling the fuselage paint pockmarks and divots with Metal Glaze filler to fill these small blemishes in the paint.

I then reinstalled the painted nose gear door hinges using button head screws.

I wanted to get these nose gear door hinges installed before the final paint coats on the fuselage and nose to ensure I didn’t ding up, damage or scratch the paint.  I’ll note that the unpainted area on the aft inside of the wheel well will be completed once I install and dial in the orientation of the belly-mounted video camera.

Again, to utilize the minimal amount of daylight currently available I went ahead and spent about 1.5 hours sanding the gray primer on the canopy frame.

I’ll reiterate that for the remainder of this build I really need to dial in the surface prep to be spot on at the primer phase so the subsequent painting goes smoother than these first rounds have.

Thus, I aggressively sanded the gray primer coat to reveal a good bit of the underlying white primer coat.  Moreover, I now start with 220 grit and finish with 320 grit, to provide a smoother, even surface for the next round of primer/paint.

I then mixed up some white primer and applied it to the canopy frame (actually, just prior to this I used the last bit of available sunlight to re-sand some areas I missed on the RAM air scoop/hell hole hatch cover… which resulted in a few more breakthroughs in the paint down to the primer coat. Definitely a recoat will be required).

As with the gray primer coat, I used a small bit of the white primer laced with a good bit of micro to do yet even another round of fills on a few minor surface blemishes.

Although the white primer never seems to fully obscure the underlying coat, this coat went on well and I’m happy with it.

In addition to the canopy frame, I sanded down the underwing baggage pod threaded mounting inserts and then applied white primer to those areas.  I also sanded and applied white primer to the bottom trailing edge of the aileron pocket, on both wings.

I also applied white primer to the West 410 refills along the edge of the wing and strake junctions, as well as primer-thin areas on both the wings and the strakes.

Here we have areas of the left wing and strake where I’ve reapplied white primer.

I had planned on getting the next round of blue paint knocked out, but it was not meant to be this evening since I decided to also apply white primer to the sanded fuselage/nose Metal Glaze fills.  On a positive note, if all goes right tomorrow I’ll be able to add the canopy frame to the list of things to get painted blue.

Pressing forward… slow but steady!

Since the days are so short now I started off today by wet sanding the RAM air scoop/hell hole hatch cover outside while I still had daylight.  With it still wet in this pic below it looks like it doesn’t need any more paint and I should call it good.

But alas, I had a number of breakthroughs in the surface so I will be applying at least one more coat of blue paint

In fact, a bit later after it dried I realized I needed to do another round of final detail sanding on the RAM air scoop, which I’ll knock out tomorrow during daylight again.

I then spent well over 4 hours sanding the fuselage white primer “freckle” retouches that filled small depressions and surface speckles in the paint.

It doesn’t look pretty for certain, but the surface is now smooth as silk.  I still need to sand down the inside of the landing brake depression for one more coat of blue paint there, but for the most part the fuselage is ready to go, except . . .

There are still a just handful of small pockmarks (slightly larger than pinholes/only on the surface) and a couple of divots (look more like dings that you’d make with the edge of a coin) that need fill.  Since they are so small, and I don’t want to wait for a full cure on West 410, I will cheat and use Evercoat Metal Glaze to fill them.  I had planned on doing that prior to paint, but with the weather so cold I didn’t want to start painting in the evening to fight the really cold overnight.

Thus I’m kicking back the painting until tomorrow late morning/early afternoon.  I also had a couple of phone calls this evening and spent some time with those.  I guess one more day won’t break the bank, eh?