After adding another round of micro around the nose-side perimeter edge of the nose hatch door, today I started off spending well over an hour fine-tuning the sanding on the micro lip.  I’m considering the nose micro around the nose hatch door complete, with a caveat that minor tweaks may be required as I prime and paint these components.

On the added lower mounting Clickbond for the right rudder cable bracket, I pulled the tape and peel ply and cleaned up the layup and threads (pic 1).  I then test mounted the right rudder cable bracket to check out the threaded mounting studs (Clickbonds) on the CS spar (pic 2)… all good.

After sanding the epoxy wipes on the aft wheel pants, I discovered that there were very slight, but noticeable (especially after paint) bumps where the glass from securing the two pant halves together were rearing their ugly heads (pic 1).  These layups are from me widening the Sam James VANs wheel pants to better fit around the Long-EZ gear leg, brake and wheel (ala Wayne Hicks).  Thus, another round of micro was required on the aft end, each side, of both wheel pants (pic 2).

I had a rough patch on each strake lower leading edge that when I micro’d the aft wheel pants above, I also hit those spots on the strakes as well.  I fully expect those to be the very last of the fills on the strakes, and after sanding I will epoxy wipe the leading edge of the strakes with 2-3 coats.

I sanded down the front wheel pants and took a bit more off on the rounded nose area, on each pant, more then I was expecting too.  With these good bit of sanding breakthroughs back into raw micro, I wanted to fill some voids and re-protect the pant noses… so I epoxy wiped them again with a couple rounds of epoxy.

With the engine off, I then got to work on the wing roots.  Here on the left you can see I trimmed and sanded the left wing’s aft heat shield platenut tabs.

Over on the right wing root, I grabbed a “before” pic with the tabs marked for trimming (pic 1).  And an “after” pic with the tabs cut and sanded (pic 2).

My last job of the evening was to lay up a hard edge on the lip of the Aft nose/avionics cover where it intersects the canopy.  For whatever reason it is way low in comparison, and instead of job globbing on micro, I added a 6-ply 3/8″ wide lip to create a harder edge which I will then finish contouring in micro.  Here it is a few hours later after it was mostly cured.

I realize in my recent banterings on what I need to finish I left out the aft nose/avionics cover… yes, I have a few final micro finish steps I need to do on this as well.

A reminder that tomorrow is my last full day of work on the build until June.  I’ll probably post about every 3-4 days since I’m limiting myself to only 1-2 hours a day on the build.