Chapter 21/22/25 – Strake glass prep

Now the prerequisite tasks are all focused on glassing the strake top skins.  Although that being said, I have some personal preferences in what I’m calling prerequisite tasks and the order in which they are completed.

The bottom line is that the wings need to be mounted in order to finalize the shape of the strakes and the interface between the outboard strakes and the wings.

Thus, I started out the first couple hours this morning getting organized and planning for the next steps in this build.  I want to have Chapter 19 – Wings completely closed out as I start on the final glassing of the strake tops.  While I glass the strake tops I’ll also start the process of attaching the winglets.

To finish out Chapter 19 I need to rig the aileron controls between the aileron and the wing root rib area.  I gathered up all my aileron control components and got them ready for install.

I then took the right wing outside and spent about 2 hours sanding down the top of the wing in prep for finishing.  I plan on doing the left wing top tomorrow.  Then the winglets probably the day after that.

After taking a break from the seemingly endless sanding on the right wing top, I then opened my package from Mountain High Oxygen: 3 foot length of blue oxygen tubing.

The routing was of course a bit more involved than anything should be, but after about half an hour I finally got the new Mountain High blue oxygen tubing ran from the left to the right strake, via the pilot’s seat back cap… ready to be connected up to the O2 bottle’s regulator and the Y-splitter for the pilot and GIB cannulas.

I then spent another half hour swapping out the wires from the old GRT EIS-4000 engine management system D-Sub connector to a new one.

Again, the old one had a socket position that simply wasn’t securing one of the sockets in place.  So far I don’t see any issues with the new 25-socket D-Sub connector.  This task is done and off the list!

Again, tomorrow I plan on sanding the other wing top in prep for both mounting them to prep and shape the top strake skins, but also to add the winglets to and be ready to finish at any time.

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