Day 198-200

Happy Thanksgiving. We have had a busy week. We’ve managed to be very productive, though.

We have been able to almost completely finish the Front Cowling. We have all the hole match drilled for the camlocks. We added an extra pair of latches to each side for additional support as well. The camlock jig Dennis 3D printed for us worked absolutely perfectly. No idea how we would have been able to do it so accurately without them. After drilling all the camlock holes we countersunk the rivet holes and riveted on the back plates.

We also polished all the outside camlock rings and latch bolts so that they would look shiny on the outside, rather than the sort of bronze finish they had on them.

As well we worked to get the turbo intake to fit the lower cowling. This took some work. The intake shaft on the cowling ended up needing to be cut about 2 1/2 inches shorter to fit and allow the tube to go on.

As we were fitting the cowling and drilling holes for the cleco’s, some of them ended up being slightly off once it sat down in its proper place. We went around and put body filler in and sanded them smooth so that they would look right once the camlock rings were installed.

We have fitted the exhaust shroud to the lower cowling. We are working and researching the best epoxy bonding for holding it on. Then we will use fiberglass and body filler to mold it in perfectly.

We also worked on taking measurements for for our paint scheme. It is going to look so classy. After we took down our measurements we disassembled the empennage. And fixed a few miner things we noticed needed fixing when we assembled it. (There were some M4 bolt holes that needed to be enlarged.)

Once the empennage was taken apart we taped off the areas on the plane that we’re going to be primed. We have some lighting on the booth to work on and once that is taken care of we will be able to roll it in and get them primed.

We are very excited! We are getting closer and closer to being able to paint very soon.