I started in on adding tape and even some cardboard to the top of the left winglet for what will be yet another video camera mount.  I added the cardboard since I will be using a rubber pad on the inside of the mount to ensure I don’t damage the paint on the winglet.  I’ll use that same rubber on the wing and right strake video camera mounts as well.

I then cut out 3 plies of BID (off the roll… haven’t done that in a while) and 2 plies of UNI (from leftover scraps) to use the same layup schedule I have on the other video camera mounts: BID-UNI-BID-UNI-BID.

I wetted out some peel ply first before laying up the 5 plies of glass, and then topped that off with some peel ply (pic 1).  Many hours later after the layup was about 90% cured, I pulled the top peel ply layer off (pic 2).

A little while later I pulled the entire layup off the left winglet top (pic 1) and then pulled the interior peel ply and simply cut the un-epoxied glass off around the edges (pic 2).

I then set the video camera mount back onto the left winglet to do its final cure overnight.

I had to run downtown for some Kerosene at a gas station that I found where I could simply pump it into a container.  I ended up going out for a quick bite with Jess, and while waiting for our food to arrive I got a call from my local canardian buddy Guy Williams.  He has heat damage to one of his Long-EZ gear legs and needs to jack up his bird to get the gear free hanging.

I had done some research on the COBA forum a week or two ago noting Steve Rothert’s roll-your-own jack stand design, before making a quick CAD model of what I remembered his design to be tonight.  I then sent these renderings to Guy to show him what we could do to help get his bird fixed and back in the air.

Back in the shop I did a A LOT of sanding on the front outboard corner of the left wing to knock down a couple of high spots, and deal with some low spot areas as well (partly my doing from my sanding down this area to knock the wingtip micro fill down a good bit).  The end result was that I had a slight low area that I decided to fill with West 410.  This is the area that I showed you had black guide coat sprayed on it in the past post.

Another problem area that I sprayed black guide coat on was over on the right wing, in a swath from the TE forward to just outboard of the wing bolt access hole.  As on the left wing above, I sanded this down for a good 20-30 minutes.  You’ll note some guide coat still showing in spots that are VERY shallow, but not high enough to get sanded off. At this point I’m going to leave some low spots that should get filled in with the first few rounds of epoxy primer that I will shoot, and then another round or two of high build 2K primer after that.  If need be, on TOP of the epoxy primer I’ll fill whatever divots or imperfections need filled.

I’ll note that just above and outboard of the wing bolt access hole I broke through back into original raw micro.  I hit this with a round of epoxy wipes as I was doing those below.

Yep, as I mixed up some West epoxy with fast hardener for the 410 fill I did on the left wing above, I used a bit of that raw epoxy to some epoxy wipes on the right wing video camera threaded inserts, a spot on the right wing outboard TE, a bit on the inboard corner of the right aileron, outboard right rudder, outboard left winglet, etc.

I then did another round of epoxy wipes about an hour later for another coat.

I wet sanded the entire top of the left wing and leading edge, as well as the left aileron top and both sides of the left rudder with 150 grit.  I then temp installed the left aileron.

I’ll note that cleaning up the hinges on the left aileron to put the other side hinge halves in place took WAY longer than I expected, and I spent nearly an hour getting those fine tuned and installed.

Now, pre-epoxy wipes I didn’t like the gap of the inboard left aileron hinge notch, so I filled it in with a small edge of flox, and then some micro/West 410 over that to finalize the fill on the very edge of the hinge notch, just underneath the screws in the pic below.

However, on the outboard/left side it’s a tad too thick/wide still and is not allowing the hinge to seat all the way forward.  This will be a simple fix of sanding it down a little.  Just wanted to show yet another task that I didn’t really report on earlier (I did the same thing on the bottom hinge of the left rudder).

I then ended the evening by wet sanding the right strake top and leading edge with 150 grit.  It turned out pretty nice if I do say so myself.

Tomorrow I will continue pressing forward with my primer & paint prepping tasks!