|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Last Modified November 7th 2000
1st October Back to building at last. My Redux, like many builder's had developed small lumps within the gel so I carefully heated it up to 50c for twenty minutes to dissolve the lumps. The Redux can in fact be heated for up to two hours if required to remove these lumps.
2nd October Windscreen bonding time. This is an 'entertaining' job. I
scuff sanded the edge of the screen and also the lip of the fuselage and then
cleaned the fuselage with acetone. I thought for some time about the best way to
mask the screen for bonding. The paint will line up with the edge of the lip but
I didn't want the filler to go all the way to the lip as it may have been
possible to see the filler from inside due to the thickness of of the
polycarbonate. I ended up applying two layers of masking tape - the top layer
being inside the lip line in order to keep the filler from being seen. Having
mixed up some redux and flox I applied this to the lip on the fuselage and then
positioned the screen. To keep it in place I used three baggage straps and,
where required, placed some foam under the baggage straps to apply local
pressure. Despite the fact that I thought I had trimmed enough off the screen I
found that the two outboard curves had to be trimmed further to get it to fit
with the required gap. A permagrit tool in my dremel came to the rescue here. I
chacked that all looked good and left the aircraft for a day.
3rd October Released the tapes. It looks good. A good batch of Superfil was made up and applied all around the edge of the screen.
4th October. A superficial sand of the filler allowed me to peel back
the top layer of masking tape to reveal a really clean line. Spent the rest of
the evening sanding, sanding, sanding. As usual, I am going to have to apply
more filler to fix a few low spots as well as building up the sides of the
fuselage to elimate the ridge line that has occurred as a result of the
polycarbonate windscreen being thicker than the lip.
5th October Continued the sanding process. I found it necessary to grind
6th October Applied more filler around the low patches surrounding the windscreen. Sanded back the under surfaces on both flaps.
7th October More sanding
8th October Applied a bit of touch up filler on the stabilators.
9th October Made a mistake and put my working clothes in the wash last night and my other set are still there. No sanding.
10th - 13th October I have to come clean. Not all of the no building periods over the past two months have been totally non aircraft related. I have now finished work on an electronic fuel gauge for the Europa and am now working hard on building up a demonstrable version. The gauge weighs the fuel head in the tank by non intrusive means, linearises the contents and displays the level on a moving bar display. The past week has been a process of converting the BASIC Stamp version to a PIC processor version so that I can reduce chip costs.
14th October Back to the sanding - a full day of it! First on the attack list was the starboard side of the windscreen. I still wasn't satisfied with the profile once I had sanded the area back so I applied filler forward and down from the windscreen in order to re profile the body to fit. Next up it was control surface sanding time. The target today was to sand all of the surfaces to the point where I could apply touch up filler. Once these were sanded back and Carol was saying that if I even dare walk into the house looking like I do then I'll be sleeping in the plane, then I spot filled the surfaces. There are a few tricky areas to sand on the ailerons and I found that Superfil carves very nicely which made life a lot easier.
15th October I got fed up with sanding so laid in some more power and signal cables into the ducts within the fuselage. The ELT remote display proved to be the trickiest one as I didn't want to reterminate the supplied cable. My ducts really weren't designed for this but a bit of work with a draw wire eventually had the cable in the right place.
16th October No building
17th October An aside... Have you ever tried to get a five foot eel out of a swimming pool? It is spring here and every spring the NZ native eels move overland from pond to pond. These delightful creatures can be as thick as an arm and up to eight feet long, though its the smaller ones that Tasha, our oldest cat, likes to catch for a snack and deliver the bit she couldn't eat to us as a gift. This morning, while having my breakfast cup of tea I noticed that all four cats were taking great interest in the swimming pool. I moved over to the pool and there, sitting on the bottom was the eel! Tasha had obviously decided that the pool was a good repositry to keep the eel for later eating. Suffice to say, extracting a large, slippery eel from a swimming pool before work is not a trivial task but eventually said eel was returned to one of the ornamental ponds in the regional botanical gardens behind the house. The cats of course found the whole exercise highly entertaining as they sat salivating at the thought of the breakfast that I was so kindly catching for them.
18th October Completed the sanding back of the windscreen surround. Now that I am satisfied with the shape the next stage is to get rid of the dust and then prime the surround.
19th October Primed the windscreen surround with three coats of smooth prime. This is the first day that the fuselage has been all white!
20th October Spotted a couple of areas that could be improved so filled them with Super Fil
21st October Sanded back the filler.
22nd October Applied more Smooth Prime to the surround.
23rd - 26th October No building, too busy getting ready for my trip.
27th - 31st October No building, touring England on behalf of Airmaster. The Airmaster prop has become Europa's factory option for electric constant speed propellers and needed PFA sign off so Airmaster asked if I would go and handle the process for them.
