Since I was up until the wee hours of the morning doing the epoxy wipes on both the left and right strakes, I got a late start to my build day.  I also had an early afternoon appointment to get some new tires on my vehicle, so that put even a bigger notch into my afternoon build activities.

Thus, I finally made it out to the shop early evening.  Again, I’m very pleased with how the strakes worked out with the epoxy wipes, especially considering my biggest problem area finishing wise is/was the aft inboard corner of strake, where the wing/strake/top cowl all intersect.  To get this close to ironed out is a big relief and will really be a huge milestone in THIS Long-EZ build.

Specifically here, note the level surface of each strake… looking pretty good in my book.

At some point I was pondering how exactly I am going to cover the wing bolt access ports on the top and bottom of each wing.  I will most likely go ‘ol skool and simply make these covers out of thin aluminum (most likely plasma cut, then painted) or 2 plies of CF… either way they’ll be thin, feather light, and silicone RTV’d into place.

I used some scrap paper to trace the outline of the right wing’s bolt access port, scanned and uploaded that into Fusion 360 CAD and then added 1/4″ extra around the perimeter for a small overlapping lip where it will get RTV’d to the wing.  I put a big hole in the middle simply to save plastic, print time and have an inspection port for my finger if need be.  I then 3D printed the wing bolt access port cover mockup (pic 1) and then test fit it on the right wing’s bolt access port (pic 2).  I think this dog will hunt, and at some point in the near future I’ll make up a batch of these covers.

Now, an issue that I needed to tackle immediately, before I can move forward with micro finishing the right side top cowl interfacing shoulder bump is the rather significant oil canning I have right along this top cowling to fuselage-side shoulder bump.  With the CAMLOC removed at this spot, and thus the natural resting cowl position with no oil canning, I could see at least an 0.08″ gap between top cowl and flange that needed to be filled.

I started with a 3-ply stepped BID layup on the shoulder bump cowl flange side, laid up the glass and then peel plied it (pic 1).  On the inside lip of the top cowl, I also added 3 plies of carbon fiber at the shoulder bump, and peel plied that layup as well.  Also on the top cowl front edge I had a little bit of a break through when I sanded it down level with the turtledeck, so I added a couple of half-moon shaped plies of CF for filler and peel plied that layup as well (pic 2).

Jumping ahead a few hours, here’s the right side top cowl shoulder bump mounting flange with the cured 3 plies of BID.  I razor trimmed the overhanging glass and pulled the peel ply.  Tomorrow I’ll re-drill the CAMLOC hole (which has Saran wrap stuffed into it to protect against any errant epoxy).

Although not a direct build action, a significant task that I needed to tackle tonight was cleaning up the tons of micro dust and piles of micro powder that was currently everywhere within the plastic hanging sheet protective space I made for this micro finishing process.  Although the entire shop does have a thin layer of micro dust on EVERYTHING, it is much less outside the hanging plastic barriers than inside in and around the plane.

Here is the left side area of the plane, where I still need to make some more dust as I will be doing the final sanding of the left winglet and wing-winglet fairing.

I added the shot above really to contrast it with the ~2 hour cleanup I did on the right side —both sweeping and shop-vacuuming— to get the vast majority of that micro dust off the floor, etc.

And the main reason I did the major cleanup on the right side was I needed to commence wet sanding the right wing and winglet with 150 grit sandpaper (again, as per Cory Bird’s method) without turning the micro dust on the floor into micro “concrete.”

I’ll further note that in reviewing my final finishing steps this go around (on the top side of the bird), that I just pulled the trigger on a longer 30″ sanding block and blue wet/dry 150 grit roll of sandpaper just a few days ago, with these delivered just yesterday.

So with new tools in hand, I got to work and wet sanded the right wing and winglet (I still need to do the rudder and aileron top).

I’ll also note while out today, I stopped by my NAPA Auto Parts store —where I bought my Nasson paint— and talked to both the in-house paint guru, and fortunately for me, the Nasson paint rep who just happened to be visiting.  My question was about the dozens of little shiny divots (not pinholes) just below the surface on the right wing that the epoxy had not quite filled in.  When, How and What to fill these was my overarching question at this point in the build.  I also had separate chats with both Mike Toomey and Steve Beert regarding this issue as well.  I have to say these 3 different guys could very likely be in a Barber Shop Quartet, because their respective answers were all in harmony and exactly the same: prime, fill the divots, final prime good before top coat.

So that dear readers is exactly my plan going forward.

It was again very late and I had run out of evening to do all the tasks I had planned to prep the left wing and winglet for epoxy wiping.  Again, I still need to final sand and contour the left winglet and fairing, but I also want to install some hard points for mounting a video camera mounting bracket on the top of the wing (and very top of winglet too, but not as critical for finishing IMO as wing).

In my research on using and mounting video cameras on airplanes, not surprisingly I discovered some companies that make aircraft video camera mounting brackets and components.  I loosely copied a diamond-shaped bracket from one of those companies as the style I would use for my wing-mounted video camera.  I then modeled that up in CAD and 3D printed the template.

The wing video camera mounting brackets will use a pair of 10-32 screws to secure the mount to the wing, much like the baggage pods on the inboard side.  The company that makes this bracket only makes a straight aluminum bracket, whereas I want mine to follow the curvature of the top wing: so composite it is (at least for now).

I first determined where the left wing cable conduit was situated inside the wing, and then positioned the vid cam mounting bracket mockup so that I would have one screw hard point forward of the conduit, and one aft.  I then traced the bracket template onto the wing.

I applied clear packing tape over the traced outline of the template and cut my glass.  The 5-ply layup schedule here is the oft-used BID-UNI-BID-UNI-BID.  I wet out a layer of peel ply first, laid up my glass, and then finished it off with peel ply on top.

Here is a better angle of the positioning of the video camera mounting bracket on the outboard wing (again, sorry for the weird LED-light induced patterns).

Tomorrow I’ll drill the 3/16″ holes in the cured bracket before removing it, then widen the holes in the wing before floxing in the 2 aluminum threaded hardpoints into the wing top (again, ala baggage pods) for this video camera mount… so those threaded inserts can be dialed in before I epoxy wipe the wing.  Then back on the winglet to get it finalized for epoxy wiping.

Pressing forward!