Last Modified February 10th 2003.

January 2003, Exodus

1st - 10th January No building, holidaying at Pauanui.

11th January The bulging of the doors is exacerbated by the pact that there is minimal stiffness in the aft part of the door frame. To increase the stiffness the first part of the modification I did was to grind back a portion of the gelcoat until I reached the underlying glass and then lay in two layers of carbon fiber bid. This covers an area around 15cm either side of the new strut mount position.

12th January I fabricated two new door strut supports out of 6061-T6 1/8" aluminium angle and tapped 5mm holes in them for the strut end balls. These were placed onto the door surface supported by a bed of redux/flox which was also used to build flanges on three of the sides. Once the redux had set I rivetted the plate to the door with countersunk 1/8" rivets then covered the horizontal portion of the plate with two layers of carbon fiber lapping onto the surrounding area by around 5cm.

13th January I needed to tidy up the edges of the layup a little so I used my dremel and permagrit tools to do this. The layup needed to be relieved a little behind the screw hole in order to accommodate a 5mm lock nut.

Starting with the port door I propped the door open with a piece of wood and established the point at which a closed and open strut would intersect on the fuselage then drilled a 4.8mm hole and threaded in the ball joint. Note that in the picture below I was just test fitting the struts. The cylinder should be uppermost in normal operation.

I clipped in the strut, and gently closed the door. Success! The door closes nicely and no longer bulges at the top. The starboard door followed in quick order and I was soon able to stand back and note that both doors sat at the same height when open.

14th January Sanded the primer on both doors and stabilators.

15th - 16th January No building, laid low with a stomach bug.

17th - 20th January The bug turned out to be a bit worse than anticipated!

21st January Somewhat alive again. Marcus, my trusty LAME from SplashAir came round to check my engine installation. He was very impressed with what he saw but asked me to do a little bit of work before he would sign the installation off. Marcus had previously rebuilt a Rotax 914 in a Europa installation and as a result of that experience asked me to move the oil line exiting the oil sump slightly aft so it had more clearance from the exhaust. This brings the oil line on the inside of the port aft exhaust rather than the outside as I had it. It then tucks up inside the ring mount, over the water hose and then follows the original track that I had to the oil tank. The hose is now around 20cm shorter than I had it originally. He also asked me to safety wire the retaining clip on the oil tank and the large clamp securing the exhaust to the engine. The final suggestion he made was that I may want to look at forced air cooling over the rectifiers. This I can easily achieve by creating an additional tap off the forced air plenum that I built into the port side of the lower cowling.

22nd - 25th January No building, catching up with work.

26th January No building as I was attending the Wings Over Wairarapa Airshow. Best radio call of the day was just prior to landing at Palmerston North.... "Uniform Bravo Delta, be advised we have just had an earthquake, clear to land!"

27th January Sanding day. Worked on the some of the control surfaces and cowlings and now have most of the parts ready  to paint. To clear the workshop a bit I have moved these pieces from the house to the hangar after having sat around for the best past of six years.

28th January Another sanding day. All of the control surfaces other than the ailerons are now finished as is 1/6 of the fuselage. I can power sand for around three hours before my hands and brain go numb!

29th January Worked on my voltage indicator processor. Rather than have voltmeters for each power supply I've made a small microcontroller which monitors the power lines and displays the power status on triple colour LEDs.

30th - 31st January You guessed it... sanding.