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Last Modified May 31st 2000
1st May - 5th May Not a lot of building done - too much work. I did spend a bit of time on the instrument panel. I had a couple of scratches on the instruments so touched these up. I found that Plaid brand, folk art paint in their liquorice colour gives a perfectly flat finish that matches instrument black. I must return the bottle to Carol!
May 6th Sanded back the fuselage primer.
May 7th I checked that the starboard duct form was as I want it and then applied a two ply bid layup over the form. As I had some spare resin made up I did a multi layer layup on a flat sheet. This will act as a baseplate for the two power bus bars and the ground plate within the instrument panel.
This was peel plyed after the layup was complete. I checked that the port door mechanism was free to move and then reduxed the shoot bolt guides into place.
May
8th Removed the duct form from the aircraft. While I was working on the
aircraft earlier I had been using a craft knife blade to trim the tape that I
was using. I thought that I had put the knife blade away but it had in fact
slipped into the space between the headrest and the fuselage side. Consequently
it got laid into the duct moulding! It came out quite easily leaving only an
imprint in the inside of the moulding.
I marked out the edges of the mouldings and then used a slitting disk to tidy these up. As I found that filling the surface of these mouldings is a bit messy to do inside the aircraft I filled them on the bench this time.
The door latch mechanism was a bit stiff when I tried it but this turned out to be a rough spot on the shoot bolt so I took it out and smoothed it up.
May
9th One issue identified with the instrument panel in several Europas is
that, once the top is painted in anti dazzle black, the interior of the panel
gets very hot. To relieve this thermal stress I am lining the top of the panel
with insulation. I made up a template from newspaper, applying indivudual pieces
until I had a good fit, and then transferred this to a piece of fiberglass
backed aluminium foil insulation. I will bond this into place with contact
adhesive to form the lining.
May 10th Having excused myself after dinner I headed to the workshop to do an hour's work. I sanded back the filler on the ducts and then applied redux to the mating surfaces and bonded them in place. To ensure that they stayed in place I used duct tape over the bonds and left the joints to set. I regret to advise that another sweatshirt gave its all in the name of the advancement of aviation. Once reduxed, a sweatshirt is never the quite the same again.
May 11th Not a happy day in builder land. The top joint on the aft section of the ducting had given way during the night and had set with a gap of around 3mm all along the edge. Sulked.
May 12th I ground away the lip of the ducting and all of the redux then applied a two bid layup along the edge of the duct, lapping it onto the fuselage by and inch or so. Finished off the job by peel plying the layup.
May 13th The duct looks much better now. Painting day again. I applied three coats of thinned primer over a seven hour period.
May 14th - 19th No building other than the occasional swipe with a sanding block.
May 20th Gave and introductory course to the newest NZ Europa builder then finished off sanding the primer. The priming of this side of the aircraft isn't going as well as the other side and I am convinced that this is due to the fact that the majority of the primer is the original version of smooth prime rather than the new UV smooth prime. There are still a few patches where things could be improved so I am going to do another set of primings with UV smooth prime.
May 21st Today I made the housing for the fuel filler and associated piping. I made up a form surrounding the pipes using 1cm thick foam. These pieces create a box shape around the various pipes. I then tied the pieces of foam together with duct tape and covered the lot with a shiny masking tape to act as a release. To create the box itself I used a carbon fibre bid sandwich with strips of biaxial cloth to act as the filler. The primary reason for this is that I am almost out of glass bi directional cloth but still have plenty of carbon and biax left. Carbon fibre is my favourite cloth of all to use, laid up on a cling film sheet it goes around complex shapes with ease. Once I had completed the layups I peel plyed the entire layup and left it to set.
May
22nd - 26th Spent a few more hours going over the fuselage sanding out any
patches that weren't quite perfect. I also worked on the filler moulding. Forst
job was to pull it off the inside of the aircraft. That in itself was not a
trivial task as it is quite a complex shape and the foam I had used was quite a
tight fit around the ducting. Once it was free I cleared out the foam shaping
from the inside and filled the surfaces.
For the next few evenings, when I had a chance, I sanded back the surfaces until they were smooth. The shape, once again, proved to be a challenge and I had to resort to using a sanding disk in some of the trickier places as it was impossible to get a piece of sandpaper into the nooks and crannies. I also discovered that it would have been a good idea to clean the edges of the moulding up first as a carbon fibre spine jammed into the top of one's finger really hurts.
May
27th Used a permagrit slitting disk to trim the edges of the moulding (see
above) and then speckle painted the moulding.
The rest of the day was spent moving all of my Europa bits, including a mountain of blue foam, from the storage shed to the hangar. Before moving the wings I had to drill out the spar support holes on the trailer to accomodate the 1/2" pip pins. This turned out to be quite tricky and entailed the use of a drill and file before I could get the pins to pass through both trailer holes and the spar without jamming.
May 28th Priming time again. Three more coats of UV smooth prime were applied with the top coat being diluted with 5% water. Diluting the top coat makes a dramatic difference to the smoothness of the finish and cuts an awful lot of sanding out. The UV smooth prime has considerably better coverage so I am going back to my earlier coating sequence for all future work with the majority of coats being done in UV smooth prime.
While
waiting for each primer coat to dry I worked on the lip of the winshield. I had
already glassed in a duct on the starboard side so I repeated this with the
port. A strip of foam 1.5cm by 1 cm was taped into position and then a couple of
layers of bid were laid up over the top.
With the paint dry on the duct I clipped it into place, and very smart it looks too. The duct will be held in place with double sided fiberglass carpet tape once the rest of the roof has been speckle coated.
May 29th It took me just on an hour to sand most of the fuselage side back to a smooth finish. Thinning the last coat of UV smooth prime with 5% water makes a dramatic difference to its ease of sanding as the primer then fills the tiny indentations which result from rollering it on unthinned. I used a 240 grit to knock the primer back and then 1200 grit, almost as a polishing cloth, to establish the finish. I have a few spots left around the wing socket and inspection holes which need a bit more attention and careful sanding to ensure that I don't take the primer off on the lips.
May 30th No building.
May 31st Sanding
