May 09, 2024     Skylight - (5.0 hours)       Category: Empennage

Drilled outboard retainer strip stack-ups. Trimmed Skylight using die grinder and cutting disk. Dressed cut edges with sharpened tool steel draw knife and sandpaper. A bit more trimming is required for proper fit-up.

  May 06, 2024     Skylight - (3.0 hours)       Category: Empennage

Finished up some small jobs then started the Skylight assembly. Drilled the forward edge of the Acrylic with a #30 drill that was dulled to a conical shape on my bench grinder. Drilled the spacer strips #30 and trimmed the ends.

  May 02, 2024     Steering Cables - (2.0 hours)       Category: Empennage

Attached 4 missing rivets on the steering cable pulley mounts at S9.

Removed and sanded the structural filler that I added around the prop spinner filler plates… they fit nicely. What looks like a gap in the photos is actually filler— the actual gap is about 0.032”.

The structural filler is West Systems epoxy, milled glass fibre and microballoons in a stiff slurrey. The filler plates were sanded to improve the bond with the filler and the spinner and backplate were taped off and the tape was waxed prior to applying the filler. When the filler was hardened, the filler plates just popped off and sanded. A bit of cosmetic filler is required prior to paint.

  Apr 30, 2024     Rudder Cable Fairing - (3.5 hours)       Category: Empennage

Mounting nutplates for steering cable fairing. The early plans are I have are misleading as well as poorly rendered, so following them may cause damage to the aft structure. Instead, I used K1000-08 nutplates, carefully placed.

Also, spent an hour priming the internals of the cabin ribs and support. Sealed them with clear tape and poured Super-K primer inside, swished around and poured out the excess.

  Apr 29, 2024     Rudder Cable Fairings - (2.0 hours)       Category: Empennage

Attached nutplates for steering cable exit fairing. The aftmost ones won't fit because they interfere with the bulkhead. More thinking required… the right ones can be fit using MK1000-8 nutplates. The left ones are more challenging. The photo shows the right nutplates in the mirror.