It's 5 years ago today that I picked up the kit from the factory.
I'm full steam ahead now to get this thing in the air before the weather turns to poo in October. LAA paperwork will take at least a month to process I think and I am not ready to submit that yet. I've got another 2 weeks (maybe 3) to go till it's ready for final inspection.
The inside of the lower cowl now has Fibrefrax and Cool-it tape applied in the hot areas near the exhaust.
I'm not sure how it happened but I didn't leave enough space between the starboard front exhaust header and the cowl so I've done a pipe wrap on that section to reduce the heat coming off it. I may be paranoid here and it would be fine but I'm not willing to take the chance with melting my newly painted cowl.
Both the Fibrefrax and the Cool-it tape are good for 1000 degrees C so should provide a good protection to the cowl.
After that was done I put the cowl on to see how it looked. I have to say that I think it really suits the shape of the rest of the aircraft and has a nice visual 'flow' to it. (Although I may be a bit biased here...).
The spinner still needs some more work to clear the cowl properly. It was made too big for the backplate and there is some pinching going on when the fasteners are done up tight so I will build out the backplate on it's edge to kill two birds with one stone.
I had to remove a couple of scratches from the canopy - one on the top (my fault) and the other on the side (from the painting I suspect as it wasn't there before). I did this using the Micro Mesh kit which has several fine grades of sandpaper and a polishing compound. This works a treat to remove scratches although there is quite a lot of man hours in doing so.
The other thing I did to the canopy was reinforce the screw in eye hook that holds the support cable on as I felt it wasn't strong enough before. We don't want our brand new canopy falling off and breaking now do we.
The inside of the fuselage base also needed reinforcing. I should have done this before paint but I ran out of time. No big drama it's done now.
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| Cutting out the Fibrefrax |
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| Pipe wrap on the starboard header as clearance is tighter than recommended 1 inch. |
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| Sticking Fibrefrax down with high temp spray glue. |
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| After applying Cool-it tape. |
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| Reinforcing the canopy securing cable hook with flock. |
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| Reinforcing the inside of the fuselage base joint. |
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