Last Modified March 9th 2003.

February 2003, Exodus Part 2

1st - 5th February No building, work, work work.

6th - 9th February No building. It was time to go to the Great Plains Fly In and defend the Navigation Competition title which I won two years ago. I did, and the Safe Air Trophy is mine for another two years. We had the entire New Zealand airborne Europa fleet at the fly in and many people commented how good they looked.

10th - 11th February Fuselage sanding.

12th - 13th February No building, at the Avalon airshow in Melbourne.

14th February  Fuselage sanding

15th - 16th February The end is in sight! Saturday was spent on my back under the aircraft sanding the primer back with my palm sander. Saturday evening was spent trying to ease the pain in my upper arms and shoulders! On Sunday I pulled the fusleage outside, covered the entire surface with 3M dry marker and sanded the entire surface smooth. I must say that the neighbours were extremely tolerant because the noise of a palm sander amplified by the fuselage is not exactly the most pleasant sound to live with for a day.

17th February I noticed that the lip at he front of the aircraft where the cowling will sit wasn't quite shaped right at one point so I trimmed it back and filled the edge with flox.

18th February I removed all of the masking and tidied up the door surrounds.

19th February No building. In Christchurch with Carol at the Cliff Richard concert.

20th February Trimmed back the flox I'd  put on the cowl lip.

21st February No building

22nd February Move out day.

It was time to move the fuselage out to the hangar and bring the wings back in. First challenge of the day was two flat tyres on the trailer after being stationary for three years. A quick trip down to the licensing station had the trailer warrant of fitness renewed then it was back to the house. With the wings in the house Stefan and I then moved the fuselage onto the trailer. Stefan was able to hold it level while I pushed the fuselage on the trailer and then raised the ramp to lock it in place. I was disappointed to find that the tailwheel clamping bracket that was supplied for the original wheel would not work with the relocated tail wheel as its position clashed with the tow bar fitting. Luckily my tie down point and a strop were able to secure the tail of the aircraft to the trailer then, once the the plane had been inspected by Marmalade,  it was off to the hangar. Arriving at the hangar and seeing ZK-UDB was quite a surprise for ZK-TSK as, until now, she thought she was the only Europa in existence. It didn't take long to get over the surprise and I quietly left and let the two aircraft get to know each other. The rest of the day was spent cleaning the garage as it hadn't been cleaned for a long time.

23rd February  Europa XS builders can skip the next couple of months as it's wing filling time!

I did a quick sand back of the first surface to make sure that I didn't have any high spots left then made up a template for my filler strips. The template is a strip of aluminium with a 1cm wide x 1/2 cm high slot cut into it.

For each row I applied a large blob of filler to the surface and then drew the template over the surface feeding the filler into the slot as I went to ensure that I had a good shaped line.

The basic concept behind this type of surface filling is that all of the shaping is done on the profiling lines. Once the profile has been established then the space between the profile lines can be filled. This means that a lot less sanding is required and filler wastage is minimised.

24th February Sanded the profile lines on the outboard section of the wing up to the outrigger support.

25th February Sanded the rest of the profile lines and filled the section from the root to the first lap support. To fill in between the profile lines I am using a plasterers straight edge with lots of Superfil running in front of the straight edge. There are a few holes but I will go over these later once the overall shape has been defined.

26th - 27th February No building, working in Nelson