With my foam side wedges cured —that make up the outboard wall of the throttle friction lock armrest pocket— I got to work cutting the foam to create a fair number of flox corners. With that, I’ll reiterate that with so much of the top, and now corner, of the armrest removed to house various components (cupholder, throttle quadrant, oil heat sub-panel, storage area, and even bottom corner of fire extinguisher divot) I want to make what is now the lattice work top of the armrest a fair bit stronger to prevent any of it breaking when I apply any pressure on it when ingressing or egressing the bird.
Here we are a bit later. I’ve laid up 2 plies of BID over the newly micro’d in place foam wedges on the throttle friction lock outboard (inside armrest) pocket wall, and also laid up 2 plies of BID and a ply of UNI in the middle area of the inside armrest —overlapping onto the underside of the armrest— to reinforce the armrest. I took this pic following the layups, so the peel ply is all in place.
Quite a few hours later I pulled the peel ply and cleaned up the layups.
I didn’t get a pic after I finished all the prep on the inside throttle friction lock added foam, but I’ll add that I rounded the corner edges quite a bit and then put decent flox fillets in place to allow the BID to lay in smoothly.
I debated whether to go one or two plies here since I don’t want to crowd the lever too much. I definitely want to go 2 plies on the topside (inboard) so if need be I’ll do some aggressive sanding down here. I also minimized the flox fillet in the corner as well since that is about the point I’ll be cutting the slot for the throttle friction lever to slide back and forth.
Note also that I added some flox and glassed the front and aft edge of the oil heat sub-panel mounting pocket.
With that, I called it a night in order to prep for my quick overnight trip tomorrow.