The turtle-DECK that is!

Yes, I busted nearly every goal I had this week, but I continue to plug along.  And dare I say, the weather is back to quite chilly once again, and is scheduled to be so this entire upcoming week.  Thus, I’m trying to knock out what chunks I can so when it does turn warmer for a good spell, I’ll be poised to strike and get the bigger stuff (underside wing ends and nose/canopy surround areas) knocked out.

For now, with a decently warm day in the high 50’s and the magic of heat lamps to keep things warm overnight, I was able to get the majority of the bottom cowling slathered up in micro.  Once I remove the bottom cowl I’ll add more to the immediate areas around the now taped up CAMLOC holes, but clearly I wanted to get the micro on the bottom cowling with it being mounted in situ to preserve the exact mounted shape as best possible.

Now, sitting on the shop floor applying micro on pretty much completely negative angled surfaces took quite a bit longer than I anticipated (over 3 hours) and took a much bigger bite out of my shop time than I had planned for.

I was able to get a plastic sheet taped in place to allow for sanding the micro’d turtledeck, but it was getting later in the evening so I decided to kick that can until tomorrow.

Which I did… and here is the initial sanding of the turtledeck on the left side. Hindsight being 20/20, if I had thought out and planned better, I think I would have waited to drill the holes and run the fuel vent lines until AFTER I micro finished and epoxy wiped the turtledeck.

You see, just above the top vent on each side the turtledeck is fairly flat in its arc around the top.  But right about where those vents are situated, the contour changes significantly with different curves and angles competing with each other, and trying to get those right, while trying to weave in and around those protruding vent lines just added to the challenge.  All in all I spent about 3 hours sanding and contouring the micro on the turtledeck and the shoulders.

After I got it all dialed in as best possible, I then added another round of micro to the divots and low spots, first on the left side (pic 1) and then the right (pic 2).  Moreover, note that I taped up the oil dipstick access door and added flocro into the gap around the door (some of us didn’t have that razor narrow cut starting out like the more consciences builders… ahem!).

A few hours later I popped the oil dipstick access door open and cleaned up the surrounding flocro filler a bit.  I also removed the tape from the door.  This is all in prep for epoxy wiping the top cowling here in the next day or three (depending on heat lamp availability!)

A sideline project I’ve been working on the past few days since I now have the canopy open is a positive block for the canopy’s air strut.  I had this on my list of things to do at some point after the bird was flying, but was reminded of it last week when I was helping my buddy Guy work on his Long-EZ.  His bird —built in 1982— has the original size canopy which is about half the size of mine, yet his air strut is one of the tall ones that is much stronger than the diminutive one I have on my canopy.

Clearly I’m aware that a good gust of wind on this massive “boat sail” of a canopy I have could easily bring it crashing closed, hopefully not on any unsuspecting head or fingers (almost certainly MINE!).  So I figured now would be a good time to get this canopy air strut safety block ginned up to get into the habit of always putting it in place, even it’s “only,” say, my fuselage sitting outside my shop.

I had envisioned a clamp style positive strut block, somewhat like the potato chip bag clip that so many canardians use for their rudder gust locks.  And I actually looked around for one at a couple stores over the last week, but oddly couldn’t find any full sized ones.  Thus, I decided to go much simpler and try out a style of strut block that simply snaps into place around the canopy strut’s inner shaft.

It took about 3 iterations with small test 3D prints to get the wall thickness and circumference angles right for a good snap into place on the canopy strut shaft, to ensure it always snapped firmly into place and was nicely secured on the strut.  With my lateral dimensions good, it was time to create a full length block for a height (vertical) test.

After all that was successful, I printed the first actual canopy strut block that you see here.

The functioning and dimensions of this version are great, with it having a good snap on pressure and removes with not too much effort either.  The issue is the holes I created to give it somewhat of a gun rail appearance.  With a sharp 1″ closing of the canopy to test how it would hold, it cracked this unit at the narrow top support above the top opening.  In response, on Version 2 I removed those thru-holes and simply added some labels on each side.  I also added some thickness to the spline down the middle.  I kicked the print off as off this writing and will grab some pics of my new version and ops test tomorrow.

Pressing on!