January 1999

I was determined to do something on the project, despite having the flu. I managed to talk Jenny into doing a lay up with me. Last time I found it was really tricky getting two pieces out of the 98 inch cut, so this time we lay the cloth over the foam before mixing up our resin. We played around with it until we were sure we had it about right. We then folded it back off the foam and covered it to protect it. We then put resin on the foam and simply folded the cloth back to its original position, too easy !!

Unfortunately I must not have been thinking when I bonded the jig blocks down and I found that I did not have the LE overlapping the edge of the bench. This made for a difficult time getting the cloth around and wetted out, other than that it went pretty well. Saved two samples, # 30 & 31, 25 c @ 45 % rh.

One of the advantages I thought I would have with winters in North America is that I would have plenty of time to work on my project. What I hadn't counted on was snow, and lots of it. Today we got 17 inches so I spent my Saturday shoveling snow.

Sunday 3

Well, we got more snow, but I was all "shoveled out". I found some 12 mm custom wood that I had saved for a rainy day (or is it a snowy day?) and made some jigs for the FL1 &FL 3 brackets. It was then time to dig into the boxes and find the metal work. A couple of months ago I got 4 plastic storage boxes and unpacked all the items into these boxes and made up a list of what was in each box. This has really speeded up the process of finding things.

No building, I have been fairly busy at work. 

I had ordered some Alodine from Aircraft Spruce and the package arrived today, so I gave the metal work a clean up with a file and a coat of Alodine. I then cut out the slots ready to accept the brackets. I used the Permagrit slit saw on my Dremmel to cut the slots and this made a quick job of the process. I thought the middle slot would be more difficult than it was. I found a drill bit made a good job of it. The bottom of the hole was quite tough and the risk of cutting through the skin was low.

More snow, but the darn stuff has frozen on, so that was another Saturdays afternoon of effort. I did do some work on the flaps. I decided to glue the jigs in place before the lay up. I knew that it would be a little more difficult to insert the brackets, but it would be easier to more accurately place the jig.

Sunday 10

Well it was time to bond the FL1 & FL3 brackets in place. I found that the instructions in the manual were very detailed, and it was helpful to make up a step by step list on a piece of paper. I used the cling wrap method to get the first layer in place and put the second layer in dry. I put all of the layers used to hold the FL7 plates in wet, and the final "coverall" layer in dry. It helps a lot to have two people working on the job when working out the bubbles. The other end was much simpler, and both ends came out quite nicely. I saved two samples for each end, cure was at 25c @ 38 % rh with local heating. Samples # 32,33,34 & 35.

I took a look at things this morning and it looked really nice, no runs or drips, and not too wet. 

My Lowrance Airmap 100 arrived today. I have been waiting a long time for one of these. I did a comparison of GPS units at the Oshkosh last year, I have been saving my penny's ever since. I spent the evening playing around with it and making airplane noises as I walked around with it.

No building 

Well it snowed most of this week, I think they have had something like three feet of snow since the beginning of the year. Even the locals are complaining about it. Today the temperature rose above freezing point for the first time in weeks and the sky was clear, so there was nothing for it but to go flying. I just did a local flight of about 25 miles, it was interesting to see all of the frozen lakes, and all of my usual landmarks covered with snow. I called into an airport on the off chance my instructor was around and to say hello. That turned out to be quite fortunate, he had found an encoding altimeter for the Europa - nice find.

In the evening I floxed the FL2 bracket in place. I lined it up with string as suggested in the manual and checked it every 30 minutes for a couple of hours to make sure it didn't move.

I cleaned up the edges of my close outs today and sanded them flat. These came out really well, not too wet and very few bubbles. I checked the alignment of theFL2 bracket with the others and it was less than perfect. . I don't think the string idea as described in the manual is too great, I will have to think of a better way for the starboard side. Then it was time for a workshop clean up before getting out the starboard flaps

I cut my cloth for both lay ups and cut out the bid covered foam joint piece. I have detoured from the manual a bit here, I floxed it on to one side first, then drilled a couple of holes for the cocktail sticks and will slide them together once the jig blocks are bonded down to the bench top. The jig blocks seem even more distorted than the port side ones, so I put off aligning these for another day.

It was time to set the core in to the other side jigs blocks. Again I found the misalignment between the two to be quite significant and I took quite a lot of time with cardboard shims and a straight edge to get them level. I guess blue foam is an in exact material to work with, and trying to produce two perfectly aligned pieces of foam is not really practical. After I got them set up I bonded them down with 5-minute epoxy and called it a night.

I boned the core into the jigs tonight and got the workshop ready for a lay up. I find that things go much better for the lay ups if I get every thing I need all laid out ahead of time

We did the first skin lay ups tonight, and they went pretty well as planned. I purchased some Dacron cloth, off which I cut some wide strips to peel ply the leading edge. This does a much nicer job than using three or four pieces of ply off the roll. Saved two samples.

Inspected & okay

I removed the core form the jig and cleaned it up. I set up the other side jig block and bonded to the bench. As with the previous jig blocks they were quite misaligned and they took several hours of shimming and checking before I was satisfied.

I took our Cessna 150 up to Juno today for its annual. It was one of those days that was close to my personal minimums. I checked with the FAA flight weather service and it seemed that for the 30 mile trip, the weather would stay stable. It turned out to be one of those days that fitted the saying "Its better to be on the ground wishing your were in the air, than in the air wishing you were on the ground." By the time I got there the ceiling was down to 800' AGL and the visibility was marginal. Thanks GPS units!

I did the second side lay-up in the afternoon which was much less eventful than my flight.

No building tonight, EAA Chapter 18 meeting . Our chapter has quite a number of builders, but many of them are at the stage where their project is in the garage, and not many people have a heated garage, so not a lot gets done.

I suspect that this time next year I will be facing the same problem.

I got a call from the A&P mechanic to say the aircraft was finished, so I hitched a ride up to Juno and flew it back. Flying at night is really enjoyable, but I do worry about the possibility of an engine out. I did an extended preflight and flew several circuits around Juno before setting off. As good as our A&P mechanic is, night flying is not the time to discover something is not quite right!

Well today turned out to be clear and sunny so I went flying, rather than spend the day down stairs in the basement. I flew up to Oshkosh, (about 60 miles) and had lunch with some friends. The landscape is still snow covered and most of the lakes are frozen, so all my landmarks look quite different. I navigated with my new GPS,- these things make it too easy.

I took the core out of its mold and cleaned up all of the edges. It was just about time for an extended cleanup of the workshop and that's where the rest of the afternoon went.