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Last Modified April 6th 2001
1st March Boldly attempted to go to Fiji but didn't make it due to Cyclone Paula.
2nd - 4th March No building, working in Fiji. The weather turned fine just in time for me to return!
5th March Cut out the lining for the port side wall, spent an hour fitting it in and then discovered that I couldn't measure right. Spend half an hour ripping it out again (good tape that), went back to bed and sulked until Carol kicked me out to go to work.
6th - 9th March No too much building. Up too late working to want to get up at 5am to spend a lot of time building airplanes. I did however spend some time working on the pilot's seat....
10th March Put in a concerted effort and sanded back the filler on all of the control surfaces to the point where they are ready for priming.
11th March Did it again, rewrote manual! The installation procedure for the lexan in the doors has you trim the lexan back until there is a 1mm gap all round then work out a way to hold this in place once redux has been applied. Most builders put straps around the aircraft, curse a few times and hope for the best. I didn't like this idea so changed the installation process. Having trimmed the edges so that the lexan would fit into the the frame I held it in place with some duct tape. I then drilled (gasp!) a 1/8" hole at the top left and the top right of the plastic. The reason you can get away with this is that the portion of the lexan that overlaps the door frame is going to be painted later.
Filling a few 1/8" holes before painting is a trivial task
compared to the task of keeping the lexan in place while bonding. I fitted two
screw clecos to hold the lexan in place and then marked out the edge to give me
clearance. With the lexan removed from the door I trimmed the edge with a
permagrit drum fitted to my dremel. Having refitted the lexan I held it down in
place and then drilled another two holes at the lower edge and also mid way
along the major part of the curve. One extra cleco was needed on the front edge
to hold it firmly in place. Now it is going to be a simple task to mask areas
off and then bond the lexan in place.
12th - 16th March Far, far too much work, not enough time to play.
17th March Something is wrong. It's a Saturday, I can't find any
jobs to do around the house, we aren't going rowing, there's no work to do
at the office, Carol just suggested I spend the day working on the plane and
when I pinched myself to see if I was dreaming it actually hurt!
First job was to mask off the inside edge of the lexan. I used crepe masking tape for this, running it right around the door on the inside joint line. With the tape in place I unclecoed the lexan and put the pieces aside. To ensure that the doors maintained their shape during the bonding process I removed both of the door seals.
As the manual says, when it comes to bonding, cleanliness is next to godliness. I cleaned the rebates in the doors with acetone and made up a batch of the glue "previously know as Redux". I made this a bit thinner than I normally use as I had two pretty flush surfaces to bond. Having applied the redux to the rebates I carefully positioned the lexan in place, applying the clecos as I went and being very careful not to get redux all over my nice clean plastic. Once the lexan was in place I went around the outside groove and filled it with redux. At this stage there was quite a bit of redux hanging around in places where it should not be - including a couple of spots on the lexan. An interesting challenge occurred here - there are two documented solvents for Redux, MEK and Acetone - both of which attack lexan. Hmmmmm. The good news is that I found that DSolvIT, a local citrus based solvent also works wonders on Redux and doesn't attack lexan.
To ensure that everything stayed truly in place I wrapped three baggage straps around the fuselage and left everything well alone until the next morning.
18th March Before heading off to watch Stefan win a Silver medal at the North Island Secondary School Rowing Championships I checked on the doors. The bonding looked good in most places. That was the good news. The bad news was that neither door would open. Despite trimming the section between the tangs to create a 3mm gap the fact that the doors no longer flexed had resulted in a conflict with the T Top. Decided to wait until I got home to worry about that one.
In the evening I managed to persuade the port door to open. It left a small
scratch on the T Top but nothing that is too visible. With that door open it was
easy to unscrew the starboard door and get that one off too.
19th March Spent the evening on the lounge floor with port door and craft knife very carefully trimming down the inside lip of the door where redux had flowed onto the masking tape. At a couple of spots it had flowed under the masking tape but I found that it came off quite easily once the vertical bond with the door was cut through. On the outside of the door I marked a line with masking tape to define the edge of the paint.
20th March One advantage of daylight saving ending is that it doesn't
feel quite so painful getting up at 5am! I lightly sanded back the edge of the
lexan. The door has to be built up to the level of the lexan as the lexan is 1mm
thicker than the flange. I made up a batch of SuperFil and filled the gap,
lapping around 2 inches onto the door to create a good looking profile.
21st - 23rd March No building - it's school science project time and I am chief technical advisor to Nathan.
24th March Sanded back the filler on the port door. I also took the opportunity to trim back one more millimetre off the top edge and at the same time bevel the edge in slightly. Upon trying the door again this strategy worked out perfectly.
The gap at the top lip is now a visual 3mm increasing to 5mm on the inside of the door. I then turned my attention to the starboard door and trimmed back the redux on the inside.
25th March I wasn't very happy with the redux coverage in a couple of places around the starboard door frame so decided to back fill the flange. I drilled a few 1/16" holes in the appropriate places and then injected redux into the gap. I also managed to add a bit along the inside lip by using a 16 gauge bovine needle on the syringe.
26th March Sanded back the edge of the lexan on the door then tried to mask off the edge but the humidity was so high that the tape wouldn't stick!!
27th March Masked the door.
28th - 31st March No building.
