February 1999

I broke out the foam from the tip and root ends tonight. One end came out quickly and cleanly, but on the other end the resin had seeped down the gap and the foam had to be picked out piece by piece.

I went along to the Civil Air Patrol meeting tonight with my son. I thought it might be a good activity for us to get involved with, and they seemed to be more interested in getting me to join than my son. It seems that they don't have enough pilots in the organization. 

The forecast for today was fine and sunny, and that was the way it turned out, but I had to pass up the opportunity to go flying because my wings were being delivered today. I was very tempted to unpack them but I don't need them for a month or two and they are well packed. I did do some measuring to see if I can get them into my downstairs workshop, and I think its going to be a close thing. I guess I will find out when the time comes.

I did the root lay up in the afternoon. This task seems to take about 3 hours and can be best described as tedious. I use the cling wrap method for the first two layers and then alternate with dry cloth. This helps to soak up excess resin. One problem I have struggled with is to try and get the subsequent layers to slide over previous layers without moving them. We hit on the idea of putting in a 2 cm strip of cling wrap on the lower closeout surface to stop the cloth sticking to it while we position the cloth along the top edge. Once its stuck at the top we slide out the cling wrap pushing the cloth into the bottom edge as we go. This seems to work quite well.

The forecast for today was supposed to be even better and I had planned to go flying. I got up early to be greeted by cloudy skies, and the weather briefer informed me that it was IFR where we had intended to go, but it would clear up. He was 50% correct, it was IFR, but it didn't clear up, so we did the tip lay up instead. This lay up does not have the 3 pieces of aluminum to flox in, and it went much quicker. I also cut out the slot for the FL 2 bracket, and I think I am only a couple of hours away from being the proud owner of a starboard flap!

Monday 8

 

Tuesday 9

I set up the FL2 bracket and floxed it in. I did a few things differently this time. The first thing I did was to put a small nut inside the bush. This made it much easier to tell if the string line was passing exactly through the middle. The other thing was to put some lead bags in the end of the clamps to offset the bending of FL1 & FL3 caused by the tight string line. I set it up to glue and checked it every 30 minutes for hours to make sure it didn't move. 

 Well despite my very best effort it was not perfect, but it was very close. I really don't know why it was not exact, but it would be less than a mm out.

I had great plans for skinning both sides of the ailerons this weekend. I got the cores out of the blocks, and for some reason they didn't want to fit together as a set. I pulled out the other cores and they had the same problem. I puzzled over this for a couple of hours and finally went and got my wife who is the best person I know at putting jig saw puzzles together.. I asked to her to read the manual and see how she would put them together. Well she fooled around and gave up as well. It seemed that the cores were cut wrong 

Today was really nice and sunny so we went flying up to Lake Superior. I had a tail wind around 35 knots going up. I seemed to get there in no time. I guess it was really like flying a Europa at 130 knots, I can hardly wait. Any long distance in the C150 seems to take all day and all night, but, is still better than no airplane! We headed east along the lake and then down the edge of Lake Michigan. It was a long day, 6.5 hours on the clock, but a great days flying.

I made a small drawing of the cores and sent it off to Europa.

I got a note from Andy telling me that the cores were cut incorrectly and suggesting that I glue up the wrong cuts and make a few new ones. I didn't feel too excited about this idea so I gave him a call. No problem, he assured me, just give it a go.

Well I got the cores out and stuck all of the bits back the way they should be. It reminded me of when I was a kid and I broke my mum's favorite vase. It seemed like a bit of a "crazy puzzle" all stuck together. I suppose that's the beauty of blue foam construction.

Sunday 21

It was a nice sunny day and I didn't really want to spend time in the basement. We got theC150 out and flew about 100 or so miles and had lunch with some friends. Our friends flew along with us in their RV6, and for someone that normally flies at 150 knots I suspect it seemed very slow, but it was a nice outing all the same.

Well I got the two cores which looked like my mums old vase and joined them together. I cut a bit of cloth as well. I tend to cut the cloth a bit longer than required because the dimensions in the manual are pretty exact.

I spent a bit of time checking the wash out before gluing the cores into the jig blocks. Fortunately they were exactly right, no extra shimming required.

 Departed overseas