Saturday 24 March ~ Friday 6 April
Traveling on business to Japan and India
Saturday 7 - Thursday 19
I had scheduled a couple of weeks holiday that coincided with the Sun and Fun fly in. Unfortunately I hadn't planned on the preceding business trip so I didn't feel particularly prepared. The weather on Saturday was too windy to think about flying so I gathered up some charts and gave it some thought.
We ultimately decided to head south and see how things went. I only experienced a little IMC conditions and we arrived just as the airstrip at Lakeland was closing for the air show. We landed at nearby Plant City where we were able to hire a car and head over to the air show. After another day of air show and meeting friends we flew over to the east coast to Vero Beech where we met with a friend at Piper Aircraft and had a look over the factory. After another day of relaxation and enjoying being near the ocean, we decided to proceed over to the Bahaman Islands. We spent several idyllic days relaxing on North Eleuthera Island before heading back via Lakeland and Europa Aviation. We had logged over 2600 nautical miles having the "trip of a lifetime".
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Friday 20
Saturday 21
This was my first weekend in the work shop after being away for over a month. It was nice to be back at it. I have decided to clear up all of those small tasks hanging around that were preventing me from bonding the top on. The first task was to finish up the tail wheel mod and the only thing left to do really was to crimp up the cables onto a couple to turnbuckles, drill out the stern post and put on a couple of nylon guides for the cables. There is no doubt about it, for all of the messing about this tail wheel modification is much tidier than the original.
Sunday 22
Well today was a sunny day, but I passed on going flying. After flying over 2600 nm in the last 10 days I am all flown out, at least for a day or two more.
One of my rudder pedals was not welded correctly and I had received a replacement from Europa. I fitted it up today and put in all of the correct hardware and locking nuts. It was nice to be putting on a few lock nuts lending an air of permanence to a bit of the project.
Monday 23
I hope I won't regret this, but I have decided to put a single strobe on the fin. I have used an Aero Flash single flash unit. The reason is that I am trying to keep power consumption down to a minimum. I fitted this up using rivet nuts in the middle of the fin. The cable passed down the middle of the ribs, and as far away as possible from the comm. antenna, which is not all that far !
The last job for the evening was to crimp on the BNC connect for the antenna in the fin. I intend to put a joiner in the cable which allows me to more easily handle the top without a long length of cable trailing around.
Tuesday 24
When I was fitting up the stabilizers last year a got a bit carried away and
cut the slots too big in the fin. for the trim tab drive rod. Fortunately
I had a little bit of foam left over from when I manufactured the
bulkhead. It was one of those jobs that took longer than expected by the
time I had shaped the foam, cut some cloth and did the lay up, however it came
out well and once the filler is applied no one will be able to notice the
repair.
Wednesday 25
I fitted up the stabilizers and connected up the trim tab drive rod and this time I was much more careful about widening the slot. I was surprised how big the slot needs to be to accommodate maximum trim and stabilizer deflection in both directions.
Thursday 28
A modification from Europa arrived in the post for the trim tabs. It required the removal of the old trim tab drive pin and it had to be replaced with one much thicker. Now this should not have been a difficult job, but I had installed the original ones incorrectly. I had put them in the correct place, but at an angle. I didn't discover this until it was installed, so on the advice of the factory I bent the pin until it was correctly aligned. Well that little trick wasn't going to work on the new tabs, they were way too thick, so this meant I had to cut into the trim tabs down to the foam and do a lay up to get it right.
Friday 27
I fitted the trim tab drive pin in place with a jig and did the lay up on top to finish the job. I hope it doesn't have to come out again, its in pretty good.
Saturday 28
It was another nice sunny day so I went flying for a while in the morning. Being a sunny day, all those other jobs seemed to beckon like cutting the grass so not much airplane building got done.
Sunday 29
I had big plans to do some Europa building, but I had one little chore to do. One of the things you have to do in this part of the world is to turn off the water to the outside taps for the winter. Since the weather had warmed up a bit it was time to turn the water back on. Well it was down hill from there. Some water had gotten trapped in the pipe and it had split. Unfortunately it was inside the wall in the workshop and it was plastered in, the job for today was to rip out the wall.
Monday 30
I would have worked on the Europa tonight, but I discovered that to do the
pipe repair
I had to pull out my workshop ceiling as well.!