Greetings Dear Readers!

The good news is that I have much to report. The bad news is that I only have one pic to share . . .

Today I organized and cleaned the garage in preparation for skinning the fuselage exterior. I sanded down the lower stringers and then vacuumed the entire fuselage.  I then finished taping the lower aft section of the fuselage and the main landing gear brackets in the “hell hole” area near the firewall.

I pre-deployed glassing supplies out to the garage.  I also added another 45° brace on the fuselage glassing spit.

I marked the top longerons for the layout of the staggered 3-ply layup of 3″ UNI “tape” (NOT actual UNI tape, this is just plies of UNI cut into 3″ strips).  Because I will be employing the Steve Volovsek/Ken Miller “Elbow Room Mod,” which enlarges the strake openings in the side of the fuselage further aft, I decided to add 4″ to each top tape so the resulting lengths are 56″, 54″, 52″ for each side (all obviously 4″ longer than plans).

Finally, I’ve been researching the final fiberglass finishing techniques and systems for the last few weeks.  I think I’ll go with West, but because of some reservations of a couple of actual builders that I’ve been discussing this with (who used other systems), I’m going to test it out first.  I picked some up from a boating supply store here in Germany for my tests.