Sun. 1
I poked around most of the day putting 4 coats of smooth prime on the door frames and around the windscreen. As usual it takes a couple of hours for each coat to dry and half an hour to apply a coat, so this kind of exercise generally consumes most of a day.
Monday 2
I spent a good part of today sanding this back. It is pretty slow going because I don't want to slip and scratch the windscreen. I did that on one of the windows. Fortunately I had a friend who volunteered to fix it using micro mesh and I know it took him a couple of days of messing about.
Tuesday 3
I masked up & sprayed around the doors & windscreen and I didn't do too well. I got the smooth prime too thin and it got a few runs in it. I did manage to get 3 coats on and I got a nice cover of primer.
Wednesday 4
First task for the day was to sand back the smooth prime with some 320 grit paper and get the edges nicely tapered back on the acrylic areas. Again I took my time so I didn't scratch the windscreen area. While it wasn't perfect I definitely called it done!
The next big task was to fill and sand the XS wings. While there doesn't appear to be a lot of work I am still expecting to invest around 25 to 30 hours per wing to get a surface that is ready for painting. To do this I first needed to do a clean up in the workshop to make some space. Once that was done Jenny and I carried the wing from the garage into the workshop. I mention this because it was via the outside door across the snow covered ground in sub zero temperatures, and I live in Wisconsin because......?
Thursday 5
I pretty well sanded until I dropped today. I managed to get the bottom and 50% of the top of the wing scuff sanded today. In the evening I got handy with the SuperFil and laid in filler around the fairings and the seam.
Friday 6
I would have sanded the last half of the top of the wing but my arms were pretty tired so I went down to the health club and sat in the hot tub for a while. Feeling somewhat rejuvenated I sanded back around the fairings and the seam on the top of the skin. The seam is pretty tricky to get a nice transition occurring. I then got busy with the SuperFil and laid in around the low spots and pin holes. I tried adding a thin layer to the seam but I am not sure if I am going to improve things much or not.
Saturday 7
Unfortunately my intended full day in the work shop got deflected by a number of "non Europa" tasks. I eventually did get down to the workshop to sand back the SuperFil and add a bit more in a few spots. I can't really get the finish I want on top of the wing along the seam - spar area. I did notice when I turned the wing over that the bottom surface didn't feel quite right either. It would appear that where the skin is bonded onto the spar causes it to be slightly flat, so I am assuming that I can't get the top 100% right either.
Sunday 8
I mixed up some smooth prime and got 3 thin coats rolled on. I was tempted to spray it on but I am glad that I didn't because I noticed I had a few pin holes and imperfections in the gel coat that needed the roller to force the primer in.
While the primer was drying I added head set jacks to the instrument panel. I decided that headset jacks in the ceiling would only give me cords that would dangle down and generally get in the way if the passenger tried to reach over the back in flight..
Monday 9
Tuesday 10
I noticed after the Smooth Prime had dried that the area around the root wasn't filled very well. I had taken the Superfil out about 250 mm from the wing fairing but it wasn't nearly enough and it is going to need redoing.
Wednesday 11
Thursday 12
I sanded back the area I had filled the night before and although it still wasn't right it was much better. Before I called it a night I mixed up a small batch of filler and popped it in all of the pin holes I could find.
Friday 13
Saturday 14
Sanded back all the smooth prime on the wing which was quite a large area and it took the most part of the afternoon to smooth this back with 150 grit. I turned the wing over and decided to redo the filling in the wing fairing area to be about 400mm wide as well. To get the filler just a little bit higher than the fairing I put on a strip of duct tape which turned out to be just right when I sanded it back.
Sunday 15
Spent the most past of the day applying smooth prime to the underside of the wing. I find that by the time you roll on 4 coats and wait for drying time it pretty well accounts for most of the day.
Monday 16 ~ Friday 20
Some how or other I caught one of the local cold viruses and I didn't feel much like sanding in whole pile of dust so I took most of the week off.
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Saturday 21
Well, despite my cold I did venture down and get about 3/4 of the underside of the wing cut with 150 grit paper. This is muscle building work and I sure pity the folks who build the classic wings.
Sunday 22
I finished the rest of the sanding and sprayed on two coats of smooth prime. I didn't quite get the paint mixture thin enough so it didn't apply as smooth as I would have liked.
Monday 23
Tuesday 24
I filled a couple of small spots on the underside of the wing and turned it over. I had pretty well decided that I was not happy with the seam on the top side of the wing and I was going to re-do it. I found a strip of 3 mm aluminum about 600mm long. I found that with a little care I could set it on its edge and bow it to match the profile of the wing. By moving it along the length of the wing I could see all of the low spots.
I spread out a section of smooth prime about 500mm wide and got it nice an runny with the heat gun and then used my aluminum strip to smooth out the section. It worked really well and I could taper it off to a very thin fill. I managed to do this for the length of the wing without mucking it up, so I carefully walked away and didn't touch anything!!
Wednesday 25
I
got out my long sanding block and worked the seam area back. While it was
not perfect it was much better than before. To get it any better I would
be messing about with it forever.
I rolled on 3 coats of smooth prime and called it a day.
Thursday 26
I cut back the wing with 150 grit paper and cleaned it up ready for spraying. I mixed up the Smooth prime a little thinner this time and sprayed on two coats. It certainly paid off, the primer looked like a finish coat of paint and while it was wet it looked like a glossy finish. I could not see any imperfections in the finished surface so it looked like re-filling the seam paid off.
Friday 27
I cut back the wing with 320 grit, and apart from a few spots on the leading edge it came out perfect. I find when I get the smooth prime sprayed on nicely it cuts back to a smooth surface pretty quickly. I am certain that this is a faster process than rolling on 6 coats of smooth prime and cutting it back.
I touched up a few spots on the leading edge with a paint brush and called it a night.
Saturday 28
I have decided not to use the Europa NACA vents but to go with a heat box and custom vents. There are going to be two vents for the windscreen and I wanted two eyeball vents for the face. I purchased some nice (but expensive) aluminum eyeball vents from AC Spruce but these were going to need some modification to fit because they came supplied with rather a large flange.
I set them up in my lathe and trimmed them back to 60mm and did a trial fit on the panel areas and so far it all looked pretty good, so feeling bold I bored some 38 mm holes in the panel This is not something I do lightly these days because of the large amount of time I have invested in this piece of aluminum!
All went well and all that was left to do was to drill and tap some 6 x 32 holes in the flange and mount them up.
I cut back the touched up areas but it didn't work out so I re-sprayed the leading edge with the touch up gun. As usual this represented 45 minutes of masking up and 5 minutes of painting
Sunday 29
I started the day working on the instrument panel which is significantly more interesting than anything to do with sanding and filling. To get the aluminum sections to fit back into the panel I had to cut the panel flange back quite a bit to allow for the flange on the eyeball vents. It is the kind of fitting job where you want to "sneak up" on it as it comes pretty close to the edge of the instrument panel.
I spent the rest of the day messing around with the flap fit up. For some reason or other I had fitted the flap too close to the wing and it almost touched. The manual suggested a 3 to 5 mm gap and the only way to really achieve this was to use new hardware. I had ordered new brackets about a month before in readiness for this task. Fortunately I still had the wing profile I had made so it was only a matter of setting it up in my Black & Decker workmate and getting it all aligned.
Monday 30
I took all of the flap mounting hardware apart and gave it the usual treatment of Alodine, Zinc Chromate undercoat and polyurethane top coat. I mounted up the aileron and found that it needed quite a bit of adjustment to get the up and down deflections correct along with the clearances between the aileron leading edge and the wing, but by the end of the day I was just about ready to declare one wing, flap and aileron ready for final painting!
One tip I can share is to use Cleco's in the hinges instead of trying to get the bolts in every time. This turned out to be quite a time saver because I estimate that I probably had the aileron on and off about 10 or so times before I was satisfied.
Tuesday 31