Last Modified October 1st 2002.

September 2002, Life's a Beach (Some of the Time!)

1st September A concerted attack on the cowlings today with the intent of getting them ready for painting. All went well until the air inlet that I had made had a partial parting of the ways with the cowling. A good scuff sanding and application of the green goop soon had that in place again. As I couldn't really do much with the lower cowling for the rest of the day I touched up the paint on the fuselage and the port door. In order to keep the bunches of drain pipes tidy I added a clamp each side of the cooling duct and passed the hoses through the clamp.

2nd September I sanded back the painting I had done on the fuselage section I had built up near the cowling. The difference in shade between the original coat and this coat is too far out to be acceptable so I am going to have to paint the forward section of the the port side of the fuselage again.

3rd - 6th September No building

7th September Got the fuselage and cowlings ready for painting then went flying out to the west coast near Auckland. Yes, the sand is black but it doesn't have threshhold markings!

8th September Painted the cowlings, the front of the port side of the fuselage,  one side of the port stabilator, the spinner and the top side of both trim tabs. I moved the air vent control from the starboard side of the tunnel to the port side. Luckily (!) I'd spaced the mounting holes for the bracket at 2.5cm on both sides so moving the bracket was pretty easy. I spend a good three hours fitting the rudder drive arm to the rudder. What a pig of a job that was. It only requires a single bolt, three washers and a nut to be fitted but requires infinite patience and lots of words in order to get it fitted. I checked the rudder movement and was pleased to note that I had at least 30 degrees of movement each way.

9th - 19th September Gosh this month has gone by fast! Sanding and polishing has taken up quite a bit of time but so has fitting the doors and, I am sad to say, I am not at all pleased how they fit. The gas struts are pushing the doors aft when closing to the point when it requires quite a bit of downward force to get them to close. I am now looking at doing the US developed mod which reverses the operation of the struts.

I painted the spinner in yellow, and then stripped all of the paint off again as I wasn't happy with the finish. It is now in primer again ready for another attempt.

I sheared the cross head of one of the screws on the radio panel and ended up having to drill it out. This led to a quick respray of the instrument panel and then reassembly. I am fitting seven automotive style fuse holders on the underside of the panel for less mission critical services. Cutting the hole for the bank of fuse holders was trivial.

I have been going through my electrical diagrams ready for wiring up the sub panels. Keeping good documentation at this stage is very important otherwise its very easy to mix up one white wire with another!

20th September Did some research on the strut mod. Other builders advise that the strut mod doesn't resolve the problem I have... which is actually fixed by keeping the doors closed for a while!

21st September My target this weekend was to do the last bit of white spray painting on the cowlings and touch up a few other areas at the same time. That was until I opened my last can of Top Gloss and found that it hadn't been tinted. Merde! Took Carol out for a coffee and a sulk then came back and wired up the two magnetos.

The centres of the mag wires terminate at bullet connectors just beside the two electronic ignition boxes while the ground wires need to be terminated on the engine block. There is 15cm or so between the two locations so the centre wire needs to be pulled away from the shield. Bob Nuckoll's Aero Electric Connection web site has an excellent pictorial guide how to do this. I fitted heat shrink around the shield and then terminated the two shields in a ring connector.

22nd September

I was still in a painting mood so painted the spinner and the tips of the stabilators . I used spray cans for these, the effect is marvellous and really lifts the look of the aircraft. Downside was that the masking tape pulled the Top Gloss off in a small strip on one of the stabilators. I must say that I am getting very close to saying that Top Gloss really isn't worth the effort, it is far too difficult to get a good bond with the underlying surface and takes too much sanding to achieve a good finish. It would have been far easier to buy fifty spray cans and paint the plane in enamel!!

23rd - 27th September Continued with electrical documentation and did some programming on my RPM/MAP indicator system.

28th September No building today. Took ZK-UBD to the Kaukapakapa flyin but should have stayed at home. Luckily the Airmaster team was on hand to replace the three propeller blades after I had trimmed the ends off them on landing. Lesson... beware of uphill runways with soft patches in the middle!

29th September Polished back the forward port side of the fuselage and then spent the rest of the day deep in the wiring of the instrument panels.

30th September Perhaps I was being a bit too harsh on Top Gloss the other day. The stabilators were the first thing I painted and I didn't know about sanding the primer back really well before painting as they only added that in a recent copy of their painting guide. I will say one thing for Polyfiber... their after sales service is excellent. A DHL courier pack arrived at my house today with a can of tint and a couple of bottles of catalyser. The cost of couriering that to New Zealand certainly wasn't cheap. I mixed the tint into the paint base and it looks a lot more like paint now!