I started off today taking the epoxy-wiped left elevator outside and sanding it with the orbital sander with 80 grit paper.  I then spent another 15 minutes handing sanding it with 150 grit.  I grabbed the right elevator and hand sanded it with 150 grit as well.

Next steps on the elevator is to West-410 fill about a half dozen minor divots on each one, then sand those, local epoxy wipes on the divot fills, before wet sanding both elevators with 150 grit.  Overall I’m pleased with how the elevators are turning out.

I turned my attention to the canard left end where I micro’d in a sleeve for the elevator hinge pin.  I had removed the hinge pin last night before locking up the shop and here is the cured sleeve as I found it this AM (pic 1).  I then used the Dremel tool to rough trim the edges flush before smoothing up the edges with a file (pic 2).  Task complete.

I taped up the underside and leading edge of the canard where it meets the fuselage/ nose sidewall, laid down a thin layer of flox and then mounted the canard.  Here we have the left side with the flox fill at the front leading edge (pic 1) —which was the main goal of this exercise— and along the underside seam as well (pic 2).

Of course I did the same thing on the right side.  Again, my main goal here was to get the front “corner” of the canard gap at the leading edge filled where it intersects both the sidewall/ nose and the aft nose/avionics cover.

Here’s what the nose side looked like after I removed the canard a couple of hours later.  I had some irregularities on the wall side along the bottom of the canard previously, thus why added a thin layer of flox to “clean” that up… which of course requires still more fill and cleaning up.  I knew this going into this task, but didn’t want to pile up the flox and have it ooze out all over the place.  Better to keep it clean and simply add another step, since this is a seal after all and not structural.

I’ll jump ahead and show you how it turned out after adding some extra flox, made up from the leftover epoxy from the layups I did below on the canopy lock reinforcement and the panel left leg hole flange.

As an aside, I’ll note that (not surprisingly) I’ve been working a safety latch for my nose hatch latch pull handle.  The new pop-up spring on the nose hatch latch works great, but the issue is the pull required is only maybe 1/4″, so I want to ensure I don’t snag the handle by accident with an electrical cable or whatever and pop my nose hatch open during flight!

After pondering it a while now, I decided to simply make a pivot block that wraps around the big cable nut.  I’ll use RTV to secure it to the nut when I have my final version ready to deploy.   I did about 3 fit test prints before I started actually designing the pivot block.  This is version 2 with the pivot hole nubs on the sides, at the vertical center of the block.  With the curve of the wheel well cover on the inboard side, there’s no clearance for the safety latch pivot arm, so I had to move the hole nubs up higher.

Which I did here.  This is Version 3 with pivot “nub” holes up a bit higher, and you can see my initial inside measurement for the arm was just a hair short, so I’ll retweak that as well.  Again, this is a sideline task that I may spend 5-10 minutes on when I go in the house to hit the bathroom or grab a drink.  I can then kick off a 3D print and head straight back out to the shop.

I wanted to start nailing down my external canopy lock, so I cleaned out the inside of the wall to allow clearance for not just the lock barrel, but also the large securing nut and also the 90º pivoting catch that will rotate down into the wall when unlocked (pic 1).

Which way does the catch pivot you ask?  Good question, since I got the two locks (if you remember, I had another lock I was testing out) confused and cleared out the aft side of pocket for the catch to pivot into… uh, oops.  Actually I needed to clear out the foam towards the front side, since it rotates forward to unlock.  It’s foam, so no big deal on refilling it.  That being said, I used the Dremel tool to trim the catch to about half its original length.

I was already planning on reinforcing the inside of the exterior wall where the lock will mount, but especially after I chewed up the top edge of the wall a bit trying to clear out the foam and micro, it definitely needed some help.  I laid up 2 plies of BID on the inside of the external wall, and of course peel plied it (pic 2).

Back to another CAD part that I designed and 3D printed: this is a mold for the instrument panel left leg hole to add a reinforcement flange to essentially make the panel thicker (by about an inch) just in case (God forbid!) you have a crash and you want to keep the thin panel from acting like a guillotine.  It also doubles as a wire tray to help corral and hid the wire’s crossing the bottom edge of the panel (pic 1).  I taped it up in prep for the layup (pic 2).

After measuring and cutting 2 plies of carbon fiber, I then wetted out peel ply onto the taped plastic mold (inside peel ply).  I then laid up the 2 plies of carbon fiber and peel plied the outside.  The carbon fiber plies extended beyond the bottom edge of the mold going aft about 1/2 inch, which overlapped onto the bottom edge of left leg opening. With the layup and form in position, I then simply clamped it in place.

While I was laying up the left side panel leg hole above, I had the right side mold (slightly shorter and narrower) 3D printing inside the house.  I plan on laying that up tomorrow.  In addition, I’ll add a ply of Lantor Soric plus 3 more plies of carbon fiber on the inside of these initial 2-ply layups.

My final build task of the evening was cleaning out the cured micro from the seams between the longeron/turtledeck and canopy.  I also did a fairly thorough initial sanding of the added micro.  Tomorrow I’ll do the final fine sanding and plan on being done with all the micro additions and tweaks to the canopy-to-fuselage perimeter interfaces.

Ok, still working to get this beast done and in the air!