Thursday 1 ~ Tuesday 6
No building, waiting for an EAA Technical councilor to visit.
Wednesday 7
The EAA technical councilor came by tonight and took a look at what I have been building so far. I was fortunate to have a person who was not only familiar with composite construction, but was also a licensed A&P mechanic and airframe inspector.
Thursday 8
Friday 9
Sat. 10 ~ Sun. 11
It was a nice sunny weekend so we decided to do a cross country with an overnight stay. We flew up the Wisconsin river to Wausau to look at all of the autumn leaves. The colour of the leaves was spectacular, enhanced by the back drop of the river.
Monday 12
Tuesday 13
I was starting to feel a bit guilty about not doing very much on the aircraft so it was time to visit the workshop. I set up the starboard and port foam core in its blocks and bonded the inner and outer cores together. I weighted this all down with my lead shot bags and left it to set.
Wednesday 14
I put away the starboard foam block and cut out some cloth. I put some masking tape along the edges where I wanted to cut. This made the cloth much easier to handle, but I did notice that if I stretched the masking tape too much before I stuck it to the cloth, it tended to introduce wrinkles. I rolled the cut cloth up on some tube and stored it for later.
It was then time to prepare the port core. I glued the core into the foam block and glued the block to my bench. It was with some irritation that I discovered that the inner and outer block were not perfectly flat. The inner core was about 1mm higher just near the LE. I assume that despite my efforts, a small piece of material got between the core and the foam block. I guess its nothing that small an amount of filler won't fix, but I would have rather not had it be there in the first place. Oh well, I guess I cannot expect to do a perfect job while learning a new skill at the same time.
I applied the entire peel ply required using double sided tape and called it quits for the night.
Thursday 15
Friday 16
Well I really don't have any excuses for not doing the first lay up tonight.... The whole job went fairly smoothly so I guess that’s a sign that we are getting better at this. I had a couple of small high spots on the foam so I will pay much more attention to the foam core before applying the micro. I put "Glad Wrap" on the flox joint as suggested and that did a beautiful job of getting the surface smooth and flat. Saved sample # 11, cured at 25c @ 61% rh with local heating applied.
Saturday 17
Everything looked okay this morning. I removed the peel ply and found no surprises. I had used a 50:50 mix of standard and slow harder and found that while the surface was cured, it hadn't fully hardened. I set up my heating lamp, which raised the surface temperature to 32c. I decided against doing the other side until it had cured a bit more.
Sunday 18
I had actually intended to do the lay up on the second side, but I found by the time I had cleaned up the edges, cut the cloth and done all of the preparation that I had run out of evening.
Monday 19
This lay up went fairly smoothly also. One problem was that it seemed difficult to lay the cloth on without any wrinkles. I think the masking tape on the cloth had contracted a little and this contributed to the problem. I used a stippled roller for wetting out the cloth, which helped a lot. I think I will use this on all of my lay ups that are of a reasonable size. Saved sample # 12 & 13, cured at 28c @ 41% rh with local heating applied.
Tuesday 20
I spent a few hours sanding down the glass over-hang on the trailing edge and the root. I started to remove the foam out of the root part. This was not "hey presto, close out flanges in 5 seconds" as stated in manual !!
Wednesday 21
I am still working on the "hey presto, close out flanges in 5 seconds" part.
Thursday 22
Friday 23
Hey presto, I finished cleaning out the root flange.
Saturday 24
I marked out the cut lines for the trim tab. As per usual I don't read things carefully enough and had to re-mark out the cut line on the top surface!
Sunday 25
I got an invitation to attend a NFL football match in Green Bay today. Apparently tickets to see this game are difficult to get, so I told my host. "if he can find the tickets, I'll find an airplane". It still surprises me, how private pilots can generally fly into class C airspace here and take their turn along with A300's and 737's. It was good practice for me to work all of the procedures associated with flying in class C.
Monday 26
I cut out the trim tab tonight. I used a hacksaw in a hand holder and it turned out to be a fairly straightforward job.
Tuesday 27
No building this evening, it was the EAA Chapter 18 annual dinner. We had the usual building reports and there seems to be quite some rivalry between the composite and RV builders. I have to confess to being more comfortable working with metal, but one nice thing about working with composites is, if you make a mistake you can often put the blue foam and sticky back!
Wednesday 28
I started on removing the foam out of the trailing edge root area. I used a hacksaw in a hand holder, holding it flat against the surface. I slipped a knife under the skin and the foam came away easily.
Thursday 29
Friday 30
I finished removing the foam from the TE edge tonight.
Saturday 31
It was turning out to be time for a workshop clean up today. I did get out the Dremmel with the Permagrit grinding cone and finish cleaning up the edges of the glass ready for the close out.