Twisted: Week 183 - Headrest, Trim and Side pocket

Hours to date: 1643.0

The trim is back in and working now. Thanks to Matthias at the Silence factory for supplying me with new cables.

A couple of things to note however. The front spring tends to catch on the notched lever below it - see pics below. To get around this I cut the ali spacer in half and put a washer on top of each section to separate the springs and put the rear spring on the bottom. This has fixed the problem.

Also the originally supplied trim indicator cable was not of the solid wire type (again see below pic) it was made up of strands - so not very stiff in compression. The new one supplied to me was solid and I had an "Ah-ha" moment as this was something that I was puzzled by in the previous setup.

Onto the headrest. I finally got a shape in foam that worked for me and allowed the shoulder harness to clear it. I then covered the front and sides in 2 layers of glass, after first putting a thin layer of micro 'slurry' on the foam to fill the pin holes.

When this was set I trimmed it out and flocked it in place on the headrest panel. When that had set I put a good bevel of flock around the edge and applied another 2 layers of glass to the edges to secure it in place.

All that's left to do now is body fill and paint then the headrest will be ready for the upholsterers to apply the foam and leather part.

I've also been thinking ahead about the lower fuselage panel. For me, because of the oil cooler ducts, this panel has to be in exactly the right place when it is bonded on.

So I've put two carbon tabs on the front and back. To the back of these will be applied a nut plate so when the panel is put in place two screws into those nut plates will make sure it is perfectly aligned.

I borrowed/adapted this idea from Johan in Belgium who has put tabs with nut plates all the way around to make the bonding process easier. Thanks Johan!

I've finally got around to making up the flanges for the access panels at the front of the fuselage - top and bottom.

I should have done these when I had the front of the safety cell cut off but wasn't thinking ahead enough - usual story! The access then would have been very straight forward. Now it is tight. I was able to do the lower one okay using the traditional idea of securing the panel in place then applying the flange from the other side. I won't be able to do this on the top one so I'll cover how I'm tackling that one when I get around to it in another post.

Finally onto the side pocket panel, which has been mostly done.

I used 4 layers of carbon for this and it's proved to be the right amount. It only weighs 190 grams and this is before it's trimmed out, but it is plenty stiff enough so that it won't be distorted when the upholsterer applies the leather to it.

A little mistake I've made here is I applied the duct tape directly to the painted cockpit interior and when pulling that off it's taken a tiny bit of paint off here and there. I should have put masking tape down first then applied the duct tape over the top of that as a release.