Saturday 2 ~ Sunday 3
It was Oshkosh air show time again so like many other aviators I did my annual pilgrimage. I have it easy, it take about one hour 15 minutes to drive from my home. It must be a sign that my project is coming to close to being finished. I didn't really buy any thing much. I did discover http://www.oregonaero.com/ now make seats for the Europa out of Tempa foam.
As usual I did spend a little time with the Europa folks and caught up with some of the other builders
Monday 4
I did a bit of work with the cowling halves getting them to the point where they actually fitted together. This is really the sort of job that you need help with. They are pretty floppy when they are not on the aircraft and its pretty hard to tell when they are fitting together properly.
Tuesday 5 ~ Thursday 7
No building.
Friday 8
I got talking to John Hurst at Europa while I was at the show and I shared with him my doubts on if I should have purchased the 914T instead of the 912S. He mentioned that it was not too late and he knew someone who would probably buy my 912S. Well I got to thinking that if I am going to take a right turn then now was the time, so I called the prospective purchaser and we came to an agreement.
Saturday 9 ~ Sunday 10
I was struggling with a very heavy head cold this weekend so not a lot of building got done. My friend Marty came by and helped me with getting the cowls fitted, at least to the point where I needed to make a few decisions.
The instructions in the manual don't offer a lot of help, but I did get a few pointers from Neville at Europa. After getting the two halves cleco's together the next step is to bore a64 mm hole into the front of the cowling. This will allow the cowl to sit into of the gearbox flange. The first time around I made the hole 44 mm which is the same as the propeller shaft and that forced the cowls for sit too far forward.
I then put a single cleco into the top of the cowl to hold it in position. To trim the back edge I first put some masking tape on which lined up with the joggle in the fuselage and then put the cowl on top.
I knew that the width of the tape was 18 mm, so it was a simple exercise to mark the cowl trim line by setting some dividers to 18 mm and running the dividers along the back edge of the tape and onto the cowl.
I now need to decide how I want to make the transition between the cowl and fuselage nice, at the moment it sits about 3 mm high along the joins of the two cowls. and I don't really want to add that much filler.
Tuesday 12 ~ Friday 15
No building.
Saturday 16
I am still having lingering doubts as to the wisdom of selling my old 912S and going for the 914 turbo, however I urged on by my wife we removed the 912S from the aircraft and boxed it all up.
Pulling the engine on and off is a fairly quick process so I spent the remainder of the day making up the metal work for the oil and water cooler. I am going to have to wait until the new engine is mounted up before I can fit this assembly to the fuselage.
Sunday 17
The bottom cowl joggle was really forcing the cowling to sit a good 2 to 3 mm high and despite rebating and reducing its thickness it was apparent that it really not ever going to sit down nicely. I put a note out on the Europa forum and I got several responses from people who said that simply cut it off with no ill effect. As some deliberation I cut it off level for about 20 mm and sure enough it sat down nicely.
For all of the areas that needed building up I put in a thin layer of flox. The reasoning is that flox will be much stronger that filler and less likely to chip off.
Monday 18 ~ Thursday 21
I spent about an hour each evening adding filler into all of the areas that I have built up with flox. It was the sort of job where you do a little and wait a day for it to cure before adding the next coating.
Friday 22
I shipped off my 912S to its new owner, thus removing any lingering doubts as to if I had done the right thing.
Saturday 23 ~ Sunday 24
Sand around the doors and fuselage - cowling joint. Masked up ready for paint.
Monday 25 ~ Wednesday 27
No building
Thursday 28
New Rotax arrived today. Its hard to imagine that this thing costs the same as a new car....... The price of the engine has been driven up by the US Military "Predator" program. The US Rotax agent seems to have all but abandoned the homebuilt market of late in favor of "Uncle Sam".
Friday 29 ~ Monday 1
Took the Comanche out to Corning NY to visit friends. It was about 500 nm and I had a heck of a tail wind, which fortunately had died down for my return trip. I averaged a 150 knots for the trip over. Mind you with avgas getting close to $3.00 a US gallon I am really looking forward to using less than half the fuel for the same trip in the Europa!