Last Modified September 3rd 2000

August 2000, The Doors

1st - 4th August Still decorating.

5th - 6th August As I didn't have much free time on Saturday I concentrated on getting the speckle coat finished inside of the aircraft and then did some experimenting with making templates for the cloth. Europa leave the upholstery entirely to the builder and, having never done this before, (heard that statement previously!) I am having to experiment with techniques. I have tried to convince Carol that, since she is so marvellous at craftwork she should really be in charge of the upholstery but have so far failed to convince her that there is not that much difference between making teddy bears and upholstering the interior of an aircraft!

Sunday started off with a good dose of sanding - starboard side this time. When I got bored of that I mounted the rudder and applied a series of blobs of super fil to the the starboard leading edge. Due to the fact that the skin thickness on the aircraft is fairly thick at the trailing edge of the fuselage there is a 3mm or so lip between the fuselage and the rudder on the starboard side. I am going to build this 3mm up with filler and will use the blobs as profiling guides. Now you know why I didn't finish off the rudder earlier!

It was finally time to attack the job f mounting the doors. It is essential (ie don't follow what I did) to make sure that the door is trimmed to fully clear the fuselage at all point of motion. I thought I had done this. Read on.

The installation procedure has you apply blobs of 5 minute araldite to the position where the door hing will be sited then, using a bit of foam in the hinge to force it onto the surface, fit the door into position and tape it in place until the glue has set. Having waited the necessary hour for the 5 minute adhesive to set I opened the port door and discovered that it didn't quite clear the fuselage (see above) at which point the glue gave way. I sanded the offending point back and reglued the door in position. The same occurred on the starboard side so repeated the process and went and did some decorating for an hour.

The second time round with the port door was more successful and I was able to drill the holes for the hinges. I temporarily attached the door and checked that it worked correctly. It did. To establish the position of the striker sockets I put a blob of nail polish on the pins, closed the door fully and then pushed the latch over as far as it would go. I driled out and then opened each hole in turn until the door would latch.

Next step was to fit the three striker tubes (the horizontal hole for the additional pin can be seen in the photo above). This was simply a case of opening the holes up until the tubes fitted into the holes though I did have to grind back the faces of each to create some clearance between the faces. The door handle is still pretty stiff but does close and when it is closed the door is very solid.

7th - 11th August Did I mention how much I hate decorating!

12th August On to the starboard door. Once I had convinced the 5 minute resin to hold the door in place I drilled out the screw holes for the hinges and put the door in place. Fitting the striker tubes went pretty much along the lines of the port door except at the rear. Due to the vagaries of fiberglass the lower part of the door surround upright didn't quite match the port side and I ended up having to embed the striker tube into the frame a little in order to create enough clearance. With the doors in place it was very obvious that the T section between the doors was going to need some attention as the aft hinge flanges were standing proud of the surface by a couple of millimetres. I covered the door with tape and then applied filler to the section between the tops of the doors in order to build the surface up.

13th August I attacked the filler on top of the aircraft and brought most of it back to door level before opeing the doors. Some more time spent with the sanding block had most of it looking good though there were a few patches where more filler was required.

14th August No building.

15th August Sanded back the top filler again until everything felt smooth. Applied more filler to fix up the tiny areas that would forever bug me. While the light in the garage was good I went down the port side of the aircraft with 800 grit getting the primer ready for its top coat. I discovered a couple of scratches that needed filling so I applied filler to these. Three hours of work, three lines of writing.

16th August Sanded back the filler on the top section.

17th - 20th August Working, and trapped in Queenstown. I think that being stuck in the adventure tourism capital of New Zealand in the middle of the worst winter storm for many years is a pretty good excuse for not building! And no, I did not go bungy jumping.

21st August Finished off tidying up the door surrounds and then reduxed the striker tubes into place in the door surrounds. While those were setting I started work on the cable ducts. To assist with running the cables I drilled 30mm holes at five locations along the length of the ducts. These will have 40mm blanking plates covering them later. Where the holes are drilled I'll be fitting tie wrap plates to secure the cables. I laid in several of the fore/aft cables drawing them in from hole to hole along the ducts.

22nd August Sanding back the door surrounds and yet again found some bits that I am not happy with so filled them. Carol thinks I am being too fussy but this is the area of the aircraft that you see every time you get in and out of it so I want to make sure it is perfect.

23rd - 24th August Worked on redesigning the headset socket locations and cable looms. I originally was going to have the sockets coming from the overhead but experience with ZK-UBD and the fact that the forward door striker goes right through the duct that I had made along the edge of the windscreen led me to a re design. I am now placing the headset sockets within a new box section which will cover the MAUW mod cross bar.

25th  August No building, working late. Can't complain though, I did 8 hours of Europa flying this week.

26th - 27th August No building, away at a family camp. Updated the flying web page.

28th August No building, working late.

29th August Got up early and did ten full stop circuits in ZK-UBD. Following that I did a bit of shaping on the lips of the doors and then primed the door flanges and T top of the doors. As I had some paint left I marker coated one side each of the stabilators. I am still trying to work out where the pin holes in the filler came from as I was sure that the stabilators looked good last time I checked them!

August 30th Sanded back the primer in the door flanges then dragged the aircraft outside. I am not sure if that was a good idea as every blemish in the port side sanding stood out like a sore thumb. Out with the 800 grit and three hours later I had it looking good. A quick wash down with water had the aircraft looking good, very good, grab camera quickly before the water dries. Once the grin had receded I pushed the plane back into the garage and applied another coat of primer to the door flanges and T top.

August 31st Sanded back the flanges. This was quite easy to do with a bit of 800 grit wet and dry.