Another 2-day post here…

I started out this morning (Day 1 after putting the plane in the grazing position) by filling in the major divots of the micro fill on the nose.

Jumping ahead to today (day 2) of this post, here is the nose with yet another minor round of micro-fills and of course the requisite sanding that goes along with that.  I just received the 1/16″ thick foam rubber seal for the nose hatch door and will install that and test it out tomorrow.

It’s hard to get a shot from below since the shop lights tend to wash out the pics, but I also did two rounds of sanding and micro fills on the strake bottom leading edges, both left and right sides.  I am very close to finalizing that as well with just a few minor micro fills on each side.

As I’ve also noted over the past few days, I decided to pull the 2000 series CAMLOCs from the aft 4 hardware positions that secure each aft wheel pant to the gear leg pant apron.

In doing so, I moved the #3 screw aft on the left side outboard just a bit more for both clearance reasons and aesthetics, which meant I first had to fill the existing hole with flox (pic 1).  I then drilled a new hole further outboard and finished installing the K1000-3 platenut on the wheel pant, to secure the countersunk 10-32 screw (pic 2).

Here we have the same thing on the right side, with K1000-3 platenuts installed in the aft wheel paint at the outboard aft 2 positions on the gear leg pant apron.  My current plan is to mount standard 4000 series CAMLOCs on the inboard positions on both wheel pants, to decrease the amount of time and energy it takes to remove the aft wheel pant to check and/or add air to the tire.

I also did a good bit of sanding and a bit more micro fill work on both left and right wheel pants as well.

I’ve been trying to get to a good point to remove the engine, but since I did pretty much my last power sanding of micro inside the shop (more to come outside the shop!), I decided to hold off on the engine removal and instead take down all the plastic sheeting that was supposed to protect the shop from micro dust (it may have helped, but there is still dust literally everywhere!).  I still have one small sheet of plastic up next to the nose of the plane, which I’ll remove tomorrow after another round or two of sanding nose micro.

Pressing forward!