I
worked around the fin area and got things better, but not perfect (by a long
shot). After my days work it was apparent that more filler was needed
around the top area of the fin section.
Saturday 1
I did a sanding operation around the fin area with 150 grit paper and generally removed the scratch marks and smoothed out the surface quite nicely.
Running my hand over the surface revealed quite a few spots in the fin area that needed more filler, so the last job for the day was to fill these spots
Sunday 2
I
worked around the fin area and got things better, but not perfect (by a long
shot). After my days work it was apparent that more filler was needed
around the top area of the fin section.
Monday 3
Still more sanding and filing on the port side. Its now at about the
stage to try some super prime undercoat. I'll be interested to see how it
goes on
pin holes, goodness knows I have enough of them.
Thursday 6
Dragged the Comanche out to take my mother for a bit of an air tour of the local area and the starter cranked an few times and then gave up the ghost. It sounded pretty sad, so we pushed the aircraft away and called it a night. I guess I won't be doing much Europa building this coming weekend.
Saturday 8
I met my aircraft partners and together we pulled all the cowls and other many bits of the front off the Comanche. I was hoping that the starter was jammed, but that certainly wasn't the case. Its one of the new light weight variety and the starter is actually a geared motor, and the gears decided to turn into metal filings. It was not a candidate for a rebuild, it was definitely time for a new one.
In the afternoon I assembled the flaps back up to the wings and fitted the
wings onto the aircraft. The intention was to do the final fit up of the
flap to fuselage on the port side, I found however, it was just right already. 
One of the things I wanted to do was to cover up the hole that the flap drive tube goes through on the fuselage. I have been pondering this for a while and decided on a fairly simple approach. I thought the easiest thing to do would to be make a tab that attached to the flap that covered the hole in the flaps raised position. To do this I needed to do some preparation work. The first step was to cover the flap drive slots with some cardboard and then put some cling wrap film over the top. The idea was to then raise the flaps and do a lay-up from the bottom of the flap to the fuselage.
I made a small template for the shape of the cloth and cut out enough bid to put on 4 plies. I then did the lay-up and covered it with peel ply.
Tuesday 11
Today a group of terrorists attacked the US. A sad day for man kind really. I doubt if anything will be the same anymore with regards to security in this country.
Friday 14 ~ Sunday 16
I had intended to fly my mother over to Niagara falls, however apart from the fact that the airplane needed a new starter, all aircraft were grounded in the US, so we decided to do our touring the good old fashion way, by car. I took a few days off and we drove a couple of hundred miles North to the Door County peninsular in upper Wisconsin.
I did do a little work on the port side flap. I cut out 4 layers of bid and constructed the second flap drive slot cover tab.
Monday 17
I slipped the wings back and trimmed the flap tabs to size. I popped the wings back in and moved the flaps up and down, and it really looks like this idea is going to work just fine. The whole idea is just too simple, I am sure that someone else is doing something the same. I popped the wings back and then put a couple of layers of cloth on the inside of the tabs.
I haven't trimmed the tab back, but if you look carefully you can see the shape of the tab on the other side.
In the afternoon I got a couple of eager helpers and rolled the fuselage onto its side so I could fill the port side seam. I found that to fill from the front to the start of the fin area took around 3.5 hours of mixing and filling. Most of the work is in the mixing. I am trying to get each mix the same so I am using a cooking measure to get the same volume of filler for each batch. I use 0.66 of a cup to one pump of West Systems Epoxy which gives a pretty dry mix. This time I put the filler on much thicker, and hopefully I won't have to put on too many re-coats.
Tuesday 18
I had my first go at roughing back the seam. I use a Stanley Surf form plane to shave the filler until all the the rough spots are down. I then managed to get half the area rubbed back using 60 grit paper before it was time to drag my extremely dusty body off to bed.
Wednesday 19
Well it was more of the same this evening, I managed to get the second half rubbed back with 60 grit paper.
Thursday 20
I spent a couple of hours rubbing back with 150 grit and the result seems okay. There were a few spots that needed a little bit of filler in them, but nothing like I had to do on the Starboard side.
Friday 21
Saturday 22
I spent most of the day sanding the side down and then adding in more filler for the low spots. I had not filled around the stabilizer and fin area so I got to, and laid in another thick coat of filler.
Sunday 23
I took my mother flying today, and we were lucky to have a really nice sunny day. We took a flight up the coast of Lake Michigan, over to La Crosse, down the Mississippi to Prairie Du Chen where we stopped for lunch and then back home. It was quite a nice way to show off the country side as it is heading into Autumn with quite a nice bit of autumn colour around..
Tuesday 25
We had our normal EAA chapter meeting and I was the invited speaker!. I gave a presentation on building the Europa and took my instrument panel along for "show and tell"
The interest was quite keen with a lot of questions during the presentation. I think a lot of people went away with a renewed respect for the aircraft and its design.
Saturday 29
The
whole of the day was consumed up sanding back the extra little spots I have
filled, along with the sanding back of the fin area. The filler around the
fin area will need a few low spots filled, but the rest of the port side is
pretty close. I made the filling seam much wider and I wished I had done
so on the starboard side. Towards the mid area of the fuselage the sides
become a bit on the "flat side"
I stood the aircraft back up and put the wings on. I wanted to get the wing root fairings glued on before winter forced me to move the project down into the basement workshop. I did a "quick fit" and it doesn't look like it's going to be too good first time around.
Sunday 30
Today was a beautiful sunny day with little or no breeze. Far too good to be working in the work shop on the Europa. I took the Comanche out and headed to the Mississippi river and followed it down for about 80 miles. It was a really nice scenic trip.