I started out the first half of the day today helping Guy William’s do a final fill on his left brake line.  Thankfully we had some knowledgeable EAA’ers working in the hangar next door to lend their expertise.  After another few rounds of filling the master cylinder and line, Guy then made a couple of high-speed taxis down the runway to get the brakes back to good… while I played airport bum visiting yet another EAA member as he worked on his Grumman Tiger.

This should be the last major help session required (hopefully) for a while now that Guy’s EZ seems to be back on its feet, so to speak.

I got back to my house early evening… out in my shop the first task I did was to trim the forward flange on the right strake storage hatch.  As I mentioned before, this forward side was quite a difficult flange layup —having to go in through the outboard strake rib— and with some difficulty getting the glass in place I had to scrap the outboard corner portion of the layup.

I’m jumping ahead here, as this is later in the evening after my corner gap fill layup cured (I used fast hardener with MGS-335 epoxy).

And here is the cured forward flange layup on the left side strake hatch.

After trimming the left strake hatch forward flange, I then spent some time figuring out exactly where I would be mounting the double-button latch.

Once I determined the latch position it allowed me to mark and trim out the hatch door’s center inside glass and foam to the underside of the top skin glass.  Clearly this will allow glass-to-“glass” (carbon fiber) strength when I layup the ply of carbon fiber over then entire inside surface of the hatch door.

Not shown are the 3 plies of BID I laid up in the hatch door’s latch depression first to get the thickness dialed in to 1/8″ (0.125″), again the depth of the buttons on the left side strake door latch.  I then laid up the single ply of carbon fiber over the inside of the left strake hatch door, minus the cutout for the hinge plate.  And of course I peel plied the inside of the latch install depression.

I then left the left strake hatch door layup to cure overnight.  Tomorrow, I plan on getting a good chunk of these of these strake storage hatch doors knocked out.  Again, all in the effort to get the bird prepped for primer and paint.