Due to prepping for a Superbowl Party that I’ll be having at the house on Sunday, I didn’t get any work done on the plane yesterday.

Today I mounted the extended firewall to the aft fuselage early on in the day.

Here’s a shot showing approximately what the new profile of the aft fuselage will be when the plane is finished.  Of course this is upside down, but clearly the width & bulk of the fuselage will be extended aft to create more of a “boat” shape vs. the traditional swoop of the old P-51 style inlet.  In short, my Long-EZ will have the same profile as one that has a NACA scoop intake.

That being said, I will have a 3″ round air scoop, somewhat like James Redmon has on his Berkut 13, that will run from aft of the landing brake and slowly meld into the bottom hell hole area so that it should (still in design phase) dive aft into the firewall and flow into the lower cowling skin.  Thus, I guess my EZ will look a tad different than all the NACA-scooped EZs.

I had pulled the main landing gear bow out a few days ago, but just this evening –with the help of my buddy Greg– I sanded down the gear legs for the eventual adding of the gear fairings, and then (re)mounted the main landing gear bow back onto the fuselage.

Although there was the usual fight to get the bolts in, I was pleased that in the end, after a few years of the gear being off & redoing the washers on the mount extrusions, that the gear fit back into the mounts with only a little bit of banging with the hammer required.

Here’s a vertical shot of the main gear legs.

I thought I’d add this pic to show you all what the battery strap for securing the main battery in place will look like.  This is an initial sample that strapworks.com sent me to finalize the custom strap that I’m having them make for me.

Tomorrow will be a light build day since my buddy Greg is over & tonight will be a late night drinking beer & swapping war stories in front of the Chimenia on the deck.  In addition, I’ll be doing the final preps for the Superbowl Party, which of course will consume all of Sunday.  I did receive my tire inner tubes so I plan to mount the tire & tube onto the other wheel.  Finally, I bought some lumber for creating a frame around the gear legs to allow me to position the wheels on the gear legs, align the wheels to each other and to dial in the toe-in correctly.  I’ll get the lumber unloaded & situated in the garage so I can start in hot & heavy on Monday installing the axles onto the gear legs.