Over the past few days I’ve continued my unwavering love of sanding in numerous areas: on the nose and nose hatch, on the strake bottom leading edges (very minor fills left), and the wheel pants.

I’m happy to report I’m about done with all these components, and then it will be on to the bottom outboard of the wings and canard contour tweaks.  With these last two, that will complete the micro finishing of this bird.  Primer and paint after that.

On the front wheel pants I finished some minor fills on the top and sides (pic 1), with a good major fill on the bottom just forward of the wheel opening (pic 2).  After a good final sanding I then epoxy wiped the wheel pants with 2 coats of West epoxy.

On Friday and today (Sunday) I had my friend’s daughter (aka “my little buddy”) come over during her last days of spring break (her call!) to help clean the shop.  Not surprisingly, with all the micro sanding the last 6 months, just about every single thing in the shop has a layer of dust on it.

We started in the left-most bay and pulled out all the tools, equipment… everything.  She blew them off with the air hose, brushed them off with a foxtail and wiped them down as I cleaned the doors, walls, and even ceiling of micro dust.  Then a good sweep before all the clean stuff came back inside.

All in all, we spent about 8 hours total cleaning.

Part of that time was a good hour+ cleaning up the plasma cutting table since it will be getting a good workout in the near future cutting the forward heat shields, center section spar “outrigger” covers, and the firewall of course.

Later this evening I pulled the engine off the bird, and blocked the engine hoist with a 2×4 positive block to ensure the engine doesn’t end up on the shop floor in the wee hours of the morning.  I’ll note the engine will get its thorough cleaning as well in due time.

I then did a decent initial cleanup of the copious amounts of micro dust all over the firewall area and wing roots.

A layup task on my list was to add another Clickbond mounting point to the right rudder cable bracket.  The left side has an Adel clamp near the outboard end that keeps it in place, but this right side is flying solo with no help.  Thus, to keep the bracket from pivoting with only one attach point, I’m adding this bottom attach point to keep it solidly in place during rudder cable/brake deployment.

I’m pressing forward with theses arts ‘n crafts games that is micro finishing, and when that is over I expect my build output to increase significantly.  I will note the major detractor to said build output is my wedding upcoming in a month.  So 1 May is my no-kidding target swap between airplane build to getting the house in order and prepping for my wedding.  I will be doing single tasks, but I expect only those that take an hour or two per day to complete.

Today I focused all on micro finishing on this bird, primarily the Big 3 areas that I have in my sights to finish up: the strakes’ lower leading edges, the wheel pants and the nose.

After these 3 are ready for primer and paint, that only leaves some fine tuning on the canard and the complete start-to-finish micro finishing on the outboard 3′-ish underside of each wing and inboard bottom winglet to complete ALL the micro finishing on this bird (not counting my baggage pods, which my buddy Shane Banquer currently has in his possession to make molds in his quest to make carbon fiber pods).

While I had the right wheel pant all buttoned up in my checking the mounting apron’s new aft outboard 10-32 countersunk screws (vs series 2000 CAMLOCs), I finalized the judicious sanding of the front/aft seams on the top, inboard and outboard surfaces.  With that sanding complete, the aft wheel pant was ready for primer and paint, with only a pair of series 4000 CAMLOC receptacles on the inboard aft apron flange (see below) to completely finish off the install.

The same followed suite on the left side wheel pant as well.

What I hadn’t accomplished yet on the front of each wheel pant “half,” since they’ve both been installed this whole time, is the micro’ing of the bottom center area just forward of the wheel.  I accomplished this by removing the wheel pant front halves, taking them outside and aggressively sanding them before slathering them up with a final (hopefully) round of micro.

I had already sanded the STRAKE lower leading edges from the last round of micro adds, and all looked good except for one small trough a few inches each side of the fuel check valve on the left side, and a rather significant single divot on the right side.  I waited to fill these areas with micro until I whipped some up for the front wheel pant “halves” above.

As for the aft wheel pants, although still in need of a pair of CAMLOC receptacles for each side, I went ahead and epoxy wiped them with 2 coats of West epoxy.

Earlier in the day I did a near complete final sanding of the top nose micro, with the only strip left to do being the immediate perimeter around the nose hatch door.

My last build act of the evening was to transfer my green tape internal perimeter nose hatch door seal templates to the 1/16″ foam rubber seal that was just delivered yesterday.  Unlike on the 1/8″ seal, this time around I actual peeled off the backing to expose the adhesive side and installed the seal (yes, pre-testing… my educated guess was that it’d work!).

I then mounted the nose hatch door, closed it with the lock latch holding firm, and then popped it open again.  And I tried this a few times to confirm its functional operation. Voila… success!

I’ll note that I’m leaving the green template tape in place until after I paint the external face of the nose hatch door.

I then spent a good 45 minutes sanding the nose hatch perimeter edge down to match the level of the closed/secured nose hatch door… and re-blended the lowered edge with the surrounding nose micro.

I still have to clean up the internal edge walls of the nose hatch door lip on the nose side, as well as pretty much the same with the interfacing nose-side lip with the aft nose/avionics cover.  Once those lip edges are clean and gaps are good I’ll be ready to epoxy wipe the nose micro.

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!

I started off today by taking the left elevator outside the shop to wet sand it with 150 grit. I am happy to report that it is now ready for primer and paint.

Then, having made my decision to swap out the aft 4 CAMLOCs on each wheel pant apron with 10-32 screws and higher strength CAMLOCs, I took a little bit of time to drill out the rivets to remove the 2000 series CAMLOC receptacles from the aft wheel pants.

I then removed the top cowling and epoxy wiped the inside surface with 2 coats of Hi-temp resin (HTR-212).

I then spent a good hour prepping, organizing and cleaning up the shop to allow me to put the bird in the grazing position for the first time —with the wings and engine installed.

I installed the battery in the nose, hooked it up, and then put the bird in the grazing position, which I captured in the video below.

I then grabbed a number of pics of the bird in the grazing position.

I’ll note here that the nose is sitting on its rubber bumper.

I set up a fan behind the canard blowing towards the nose and out of the shop.  I then loaded up a 40 grit disc on my orbital sander to do the initial sanding of the nose micro, knocking down the major high spots.

Here’s a couple more shots of the initial sanding on the nose micro.

I then used my 36-grit sanding board to block sand the nose micro a good bit more.

A wider angle shot of the bird in the grazing position with the nose micro sanded.

And a final shot of the sanded nose with the bird in the grazing position.

Again, I ordered some 1/16″ thick foam rubber seal for the nose hatch door, and once that arrives I can install it and then finish the final sanding of the nose and nose hatch perimeter to ensure that seam is even, level and tight.  Tomorrow I also plan on filling the numerous divots in the micro that I missed on my initial nose micro’ing effort.

Today ended up being primarily about working on the wheel pants and a good bit on getting the nose hatch door to latch with the added micro.

That being said, I started off by wet sanding the right elevator, after which I discovered a couple of rough spots on the top trailing edge.  So I added small dollops of micro to those spots.

I then took the right aft wheel pant outside to knock down the upper and lower micro areas I applied yesterday with my orbital & pad sanders.  I then taped up the seam edge of the forward pant half and the gear leg attach apron before reinstalling the right aft wheel pant (pic 1).

I then whipped up some more micro and applied it to the middle area between the upper and lower micro areas on the inboard side… obviously the aft was a bit lower here as compared to the forward wheel pant (pic 2).

I also added a bunch more micro to both the front and aft halves of the right wheel pant on the outboard areas… slowly getting everything leveled out on these wheel pants.

On the left wheel pant, I removed the aft half, took it outside and knocked down the micro I had slathered up on it a few days ago.  I then remounted the aft left wheel pant and finalized the sanding by hand with it in place.  The front still needs a little bit more micro, which I’ll apply the next time mix some up.

I then unexpectedly spent about 2 hours assessing the fit of the nose hatch door into the newly micro’d top nose.  I did a deep dive on determining why my 1/8″ seal was not working, and ended removing all of it one segment at a time.

With no seal on I still wasn’t getting the nose hatch door setting in place well enough for me to get the lock to actually latch… now, it would appear to be closed and latched, but if I pulled on the edge with my fingernail or a flat blade, the hatch door would pop open. Not good.

I’ve noticed that as the latch grabs the catch on the door side, it very slightly pivots towards the right.  Clearly the only thing that changed with the nose hatch door configuration was the added micro to the nose.  So, based on my hypothesis, I very slowly started to sand around the perimeter edge of the micro, focusing on the right side and specifically the right aft corner.

After about half an hour of slowly removing more of the micro edge around the nose hatch door, I finally got it to latch.

I then started to slowly add in the 1/8″ thick seal around the inside edge, but it’s simply too thick.  So I called it a night, went inside the house and ordered the same edge seal, only 1/16″ thick.  It will arrive in the next 2-3 days.

Back on the wheel pants for just a bit: I’ve been pondering and finally made the decision to pull the four (4) 2000 series CAMLOCs off the aft of each gear leg wheel pant apron and replace those with screws on the outboard side, and 4000 series (standard) CAMLOCs on the inboard side.  Over the next week I’ll start removing the 2000 series CAMLOC receptacles and slowly swap those out.

Again, still pressing forward… slowly but surely!

Since I couldn’t get the nose hatch door to latch into place last night before microing up the majority of the nose, my goal today was to definitely finish the micro application job on the nose.

Thus, I pulled the tape that secured the very aft edge of the nose hatch door as close to fully closed as possible, and then spent another half an hour carefully cutting and sanding the micro away from the edge of the nose hatch door to allow it to open freely.

Once the nose hatch door opened freely I removed quite a bit of tape from the foam seal to see if I could then get the door to lock close.  It didn’t (So yes, I probably could have waited to free the door, which may have allowed me not to go “weighted”… ahem!).  To keep the door closed while I micro’d the previously taped swath on each side, I then added a couple of heavy weights onto the door to keep it pressed as firmly closed as possible.

I then whipped up some micro and slathered it into the unmicro’d swaths from the door securing tape from last night.

At this point I can officially declare that the nose is in fact micro’d up!  Now all that’s needed is a bunch more sanding. Yay!

While the newly added micro on the nose cured, I went ahead and knocked out a sideline task of epoxy wiping the inside surface of the bottom cowling.  I had wholly expected to apply 2-3 coats, but after applying the first epoxy wipe I called it good.

You see, the reason why I’m epoxy wiping the inside of the cowling is twofold:
1st, I want to be able to more easily clean up any oil or liquids that come in contact with the cowling, without them soaking into the weave of the carbon fiber.
2nd, I want a smoother surface to apply my heat shields to under the exhaust pipes.  And since I had to rebuild the back half of the cowling (where the exhaust pipes are located) AND I peel plied my layups, one epoxy wipe seemed to do the trick just fine.

I also expected to get to wet sanding the elevators with 150 grit sand paper, but after doing the initial dry sanding with 120 grit on both elevators (almost 1.5 hours) I had had enough of sanding so I’ll do the wet sanding tomorrow.  Moreover, I need to fill a couple slight divots on the left elevator, so I did that and left it to cure overnight.

Back on the nose, I sanded the intersection at the aft nose/avionics cover new front lip and the aft area of the micro’d nose.  I also used my razor knife to carefully cut along the front of the aft nose cover front lip to free it from the nose micro.

I then pulled all the tape off the front lip of the aft nose cover.  Here it is open, with a shot from the aft side of the new micro lip on the nose.

And here’s a shot of the same from the front side.  I’ll note that there is just enough clearance for the front nose hatch door to be opened while the aft nose cover is fully opened.

With the tape off the front lip of the aft nose cover, I then snapped it back down into the closed position and grabbed a shot of the intersection between it and the new nose micro.

And of course we need a shot of the newly micro’d nose, which obviously needs to be sanded to a “pleasing’ shape at this point.

And one final shot of the freshly micro’d nose with the nose hatch door open.  Note the green tape which I used as my template, and is currently attached to the nose hatch door perimeter foam gap seal.

As I mentioned before, with the significantly less amount of tape remaining on the door seal (after I removed the duct tape and blue painters tape) it is still NOT latching closed.  The 1/8″ thick seal all around the entire perimeter is not allowing the door to close and latch… so I’m pulling the trigger on the same seal, only 1/16″ thick.  I’m thinking the front edge, front corners and aft middle segments will be 1/16″ thick, while the sides and aft corners will be the 1/8″ seal.  We’ll see and assess further in few days.

It was getting late, so I called it a night.  I’ll continue on with my micro finishing shenanigans tomorrow.

Well, today I definitely paid off my missed build time during my Long-EZ flying shenanigans yesterday with Guy.

I started off by fine-tuning the sanding of the added micro just forward of and at the junction with the top cowl front lip.  Again, at the 10 O ‘clock position on the left side (pic 1) and at the 2 O ‘clock position on the right side (pic 2).

I also final sanded the area around the top cowl top center CAMLOC where it meets up with the aft edge of the turtledeck.

With all this latest work on the turtledeck, I’m happy to report that the perimeter areas around the canopy edges (minus the aft nose/avionics cover) are complete!

Although way down on my list of to-do tasks, I wanted to get a layup or two knocked out today to trim down that list.  As I did on the left wheel pant, the aft side of the right wheel pant has 3 spots that are significantly lower than the front pant edge: those being one on the top (same as left side) and then inboard top and inboard bottom corner… this last one being the most significant of all of them.

I had already marked these low spots months ago to ID where the stepped plies of BID needed to be added.  I made templates of each set of layups and then cut the BID and peel ply before getting to work laying them all up.

I had a bit of epoxy remaining in my cup when I finished with the layups above, so I pulled out my Hertzler Silver Bullet prop.  It has some slight edge delams going on, mainly near the prop hub, so I filled those with epoxy, peel plied the corner edge and then taped them tightly closed to cure.  Yet another task off my list.

After aggressively sanding the bottom leading edge of both strakes, I then slathered them up with a good bit of micro.  I had applied micro before to fill this leading edge area, but the overall transition contour from bottom strake to leading edge was not uniformly smooth, thus the new round of micro on the left strake bottom LE (pic 1) and the right as well (pic 2).

My last task of the evening was the big one.  I taped up the front edge of the aft nose/ avionics cover before securing it into place.  I then sanded the raw glass and transition edges of the pre-existing micro fill on the nose.

For the nose hatch door I spent about 45 minutes taping up the edge flange of the door with green painters tape, ensuring I got both the inside edge and perimeter edge exact as possible.

I then made an angle cut in each of the 4 corners of the green tape edge strips to be able to pull off the 4 tape templates (left, right, front, aft) to then use them to cut the 1/8″ foam rubber seal.

I then taped the seal segments in place on the inside flange of the nose hatch door (I don’t want to apply them yet until after I paint the nose hatch door exterior), finishing off with a strip of duct tape as a gap for the perimeter edge of the nose hatch door.

Now, the issue with using the multiple plies of tape to both secure the seal to the door and protect the seal from the micro, is that it made it all a little too thick to actual get the door to latch close.  So I simply used tape around aft edge of the door to secure the door closed.

I then slathered up the nose with thick micro.

Here’s some side shots of nose slathered up with micro.  I then left it to cure overnight.

Tomorrow I’ll remove the nose hatch door securing tape and micro those areas, as well as press forward with other finishing tasks.

Moving ahead!

I started off today already a little behind the power curve build-wise since I had to run downtown to knock out a couple of errands.  While downtown I stopped by one of my favorite coffee joints for a cup of java while I planned my day out.

Back home, I put the finishing touches on the latest blog post and uploaded that.  I had just finished printing out the day’s shop task list when I got a call from Guy William’s (local canardian), asking me if I wanted to go flying?  Are you kidding me?!  As much as I want to get my bird in the air, I figure it would be good to get a motivational hop in his Long-EZ (classic rationalization), given that I’ve done my fair share of work on it over the past number of months.

I got to Guy’s hangar at the airport about 45 minutes later, where he already had his Long-EZ pulled out and pre-flighted.  I hopped in, buckled up and grabbed this pic just prior to us firing up and taxiing out for the flight.

I’ll note that today was just about a perfect flying day.  We took off and immediately could see North Carolina’s beautiful Chrystal Coast (Outer Banks) all around us.

Once leveled out, we could see the airport down below (KMRH) that we just departed.

We headed toward the lighthouse on Point Lookout and after a few tight turns over the Atlantic coastline, I took over flying and went out just a bit beyond the point out over the Atlantic before turning back around and flying up the beach a bit.

We did a few more turns, and since Guy has a rear seat throttle, we even did a number of stalls, which is a first for me in the Long-EZ.

Overall, a super great experience and a lot of fun! (Thanks Guy!!!) and more importantly, all the work we did on his plane proved to be up to the challenge of real world ops.

Of course no good deed (or goofing off flying!) goes unpunished, so why should today be any different??  On the way home from the airport I discovered a giant screw in my right front tire.  The good news is I was just a couple of miles from where I bought the tires, and since I have an anything goes warranty, I pulled in and had them fix it.  The bad news is that it took another good 1.5 hour more chunk out of my day.

Ok, back in the shop I did a bit of sanding on the low spot fills I did on the D-deck left side 10 O’ clock position where it met the top cowling (pic 1), and the same for the right side at the 2 O ‘clock position (pic 2).  I also initially sanded the top cowl front edge centerline where it met the D-deck.  It was getting later in the evening so I punted the final sanding until tomorrow as to not screw anything up.

I also did the final prep on the elevator BOTTOM surfaces before doing a final epoxy wipe on each one of those.  The next step is to wet sand these epoxy-wiped elevators, at which point they’ll be ready for primer.

Although I haven’t shown it, over the past week whenever I’ve had a bit of extra epoxy in my cup, I’ve been adding a couple of stepped plies of BID at a time (4 plies total) to fill in a low spot on the aft left wheel pant where it meets the front pant… about even with the micro on the front pant seam and in a curve aft towards the gear leg pant apron.  For whatever reason I had a really low spot here, so I filled it with a bit of glass before adding a layer of micro.  I added glass since I wanted to minimize any cracking of what would have been a fairly thick layer of micro.

I double checked the thickness of my added BID plies, and then remounted the aft pant half and after taping up the intersecting edges of the gear leg apron and the front pant half, I slathered on a good layer of micro.  I also hit the top forward area of the front wheel pant as well since there was a slight depression down the centerline.

Of course I didn’t get nearly what I had planned to done in the shop, but I did get a little bit knocked out.  And a day out flying is always good stuff!

My goal today was to no-kidding finalize the integration of the aft canopy into the longeron, shoulder corner and D-deck.  I have some very strange contours going on here, and thought I had it a couple of days ago, but just above the corner canopy curve on each side I had about a 2.5″ strip where the canopy lip was much prouder (by about 0.1″) than the D-deck surface… so I added micro to those areas.

Today I started by actually removing the top cowling, sanding the aft perimeter edge/lip of the D-deck, shoulders and strake, as well as cleaned up the front CAMLOC/screw flange of the top cowling.  I then remounted the top cowling with all its hardware for this final sanding, which I spent nearly 2 hours doing.

All looked good except a low spot on the D-deck in comparison to the top cowl front lip, at about the left 10 O’ clock position, and mirrored at the 2 O’ clock position on the right.  I guess I should feel good that my refills are proving to be symmetrical on both the left and right sides (some building humor there!).

I did have one more problem area and that was the top center of the top cowling, about an inch to either side… this edge is low compare to the D-deck, and the D-deck profile looks good to me.  So I added a bit more micro at this spot on the top cowl and will blend it in to match the D-deck.

When I added micro to the D-deck vs canopy lip low spots yesterday, I also hit a couple of divots on the added front edge lip of the aft nose/avionics cover.  Well, I sanded that down as well today, and I think I’m looking pretty good on this new, added front lip.  This is in an effort to get the front nose micro’d up . . .

Speaking of micro finishing the front nose: a big issue is the recent addition of the latch internal spring plunger —that is critical for the nose hatch latch to operate as designed— is pushing up on the inside of the nose hatch door.  My original 1/32″ rubber seal is definitely not the right thickness for the job (if it ever was… I never did a final test on it).  A few days ago I ordered some 2″ wide 1/8″ foam sealant (note roll top left corner of pic), which just arrived, and I cut off 4 squares to do an initial check on the nose door sealing.

I have to say it looks very promising.  I’ll add some more squares including centerline front and aft tomorrow to assess further.  If this seal is the one, I should be slathering up the nose within the next few days and finalizing the micro finish on that area.

My final task of the evening, which also took a decent little bit of time, was sanding down all the filled divots and larger pin holes on the top surfaces of the elevators.  I then finished the job with a very thin epoxy wipe on each elevator top.

Tomorrow I’ll wet sand the top surfaces, and then epoxy wipe the bottom surface of each elevator.

A big note on this airplane build: Since it’s the middle of April, and Jess and are getting married the end of May, from here on out until the wedding I’ll be limiting myself to about 3 hours a day on the build. Clearly I think I’ll continue to make significant progress as well, but I need to get a bunch done on the house as I have wedding visitors coming in during the last week of May.

Still, pressing forward.

Although I did some sanding and touch-up micro on the aft nose cover, around the D-deck/longerons and on the elevators, my main push today was to finish off the install of the canopy latch external lock, by filling in the area around the lock assembly internal to the wall.

With the micro fill aft of the lock assembly good, I then made up a dam/form made out of clear plastic to protect the pivoting lock catch on the inboard side, as well as the slot inside the sidewall that the lock catch pivots into when unlocked.

I then mixed up and added some pour foam in this little pocket and let it cure.

I thought it was a bit more cured than it was when I went to remove the big blob of exuding foam, and drug some of the foam from inside the wall that I was trying to fill. No big deal, so I cleaned it up a bit and added a layer of micro (about 0.2″) on top of the foam and filled any voids too.  Here’s how that looked.

The plastic dam had a bit of springiness to it, and wanted to come off the outboard face of the pivoting lock catch, so I pinned them together with a Cleco clamp, just as I did when I added the pour foam.

A few hours later, when the micro had pretty much cured.  I sanded it down and cleaned up the internal area of the lock, mainly around the pivoting lock latch.  It took a little bit of digging and a few iterations to clean it all up and ensure the lock had freedom of movement in its lock/unlock positions.

I’ve been planning on making a video on my completed canopy latch, and I did just that for the last few hours of this late evening.

Pressing forward!