I started off this morning by pulling the protective tape from the aft baffle skirt to get an idea of the gap and general look of the bottom cowl aft baffle ribs… not bad.  I’ll note that due to the tightness of my cowling, and thus the bare minimum gap between baffle and cowl, I have these carbon fiber ribs offset just a hair aft of the baffle skirt. In addition, I’ll remind you all that these baffle ribs also serve as my bottom cowl stiffener.

Another shot of the aft side 2-ply carbon fiber bottom cowl baffle rib layups, with peel ply and tape pulled, on the left side (pic 1) and the right side (pic 2).

I needed to do a little Dremel work and rigorous sanding on the front side of these new rib layups to get them prepped for the final front side layups, so I took the bottom cowling outside in front of the shop to knock that out.

Once back in the shop, I cut 2 plies of carbon fiber for each side, peel ply patches (due to the curved surface) and a small wedge of Lantor-Soric filler material (shown below) to help in the transition to the preexisting mini-bulkhead edges.

I then wet out and laid up the 2 plies of carbon fiber each side, and peel plied the layups, again using hi-temp HTR-212 epoxy just as I did the aft half layups.

I let the layups cure for a couple of hours before mounting the bottom cowling back onto the bird.

Just after I finished the layups I jumped on a sideline task that is definitely flying related, but not specifically build related.  Since I’ll be flying again soon, with my BFR (biennial flight review) on the near horizon, I thought I would get my ANR headphones configured.

You see, a couple of years ago as I was talking to my buddy Brian Ashton (twin-engine Long-EZ builder) in Alaska, he mentioned that he had just tried out his Sony noise-cancelling headphones with an aviation mic attachment.  I thought that was cool, but didn’t take much note of it, until a follow on conversation a few weeks later… where he explained his setup more thoroughly.

The kit is as follows: you take a pair of Bose or Sony non-aviation noise-cancelling headphones and marry them up to an ANR microphone kit that is sold by avee, a company out of Norway.  I bought the mic unit (top in pic), a standard GA jack cord, and a Bose LEMO jack cord (I have both LEMO and standard jacks in my bird).  I also separately bought a Bose LEMO to standard GA jack connector from ACS.

Oh, and they’ll personalize the case for you as well!

When I talked to Brian, he was using the Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones.  Being cheap and after watching reviews on YouTube where folks noted virtually no difference (much like my recent action camera purchase) between the models, I pulled the trigger on a set of like-new WH-1000XM3 headphones off of eBay for a fraction of the price.

Now, these headphones are known to occasionally need a battery replacement after long use (or no use) and mine was no different.   It also doesn’t help when you don’t take the time to really understand how to operate something (which I didn’t)… ahem, there may have been no real battery issue at all!  Anyway, I set them aside after thinking I needed to replace the battery and never got back to them.  Well, in trying to clear out the queue of all my electronics that are awaiting repair (I recently mentioned my MacBook Air battery replacement task) the time to bring this headphone kit online was now.

After maybe 30 minutes of research and prepping myself to change the battery (more involved then just installing AA’s), I found a nifty and pertinent video showing how to reset the headphones with simple timed button pushes.  Sure enough it worked, and after a half hour charge I spent the next few hours wearing the headphones, listening to music, etc. synced to my cell phone via Bluetooth.

With my headphone ops function test a success, I proceeded to perform the simple task of attaching a strip of magnets to the bottom of the left ear cup, just adjacent the 3.5mm jack port.  I first cleaned the adhesive magnet strip mounting area with an included alcohol wipe . . .

Then peeled off the protective backing off the adhesive magnet strip, which comes pre-mounted on the microphone assembly (pic 1), and then plugged the microphone assembly’s 3.5mm jack into the left ear cup, keeping the entire unit pressed firmly in place for 30 seconds (pic 2).

And Voila!  I now have a set of wireless Bluetooth noise-cancelling headphones AND a pair of ANR headphones for the plane.  Pretty cool!

With the magnets, clearly you can see that the microphone assembly can be removed, but only if you really want it to.  Otherwise it stays firmly attached to the headset.

Here’s a closer shot of the magnet strip on the left ear cup of the headphones.

And another shot here of the Sony headphones, the avee microphone assembly, avee Bose LEMO cord, and the separately purchased Bose LEMO-to-GA jack.  Obviously the cord plugs into the back of the microphone assembly.  There is also a volume knob on the microphone assembly as well.

I’ll note that when I was doing my original research, after Brian told me of this cool kit, that I saw a number of positive reviews from airline pilots using this setup.  Moreover, the fact that it cost about a 1/3 of what a pair of Bose ANR headsets cost, I was definitely curious.

I closed out the evening doing a number of hours of CAD modeling work on a few different Long-EZ components.  I’ll cover those over the next few days.  For now, I’m calling it another late night.

Moving onward!