Saturday 1
Well my quest for this month is to get the port wing primed and ready for painting. I did a little touch up sanding and sprayed the bottom of the wing with two coats. I use a HVLP gun with a 2 mm nozzle. I find that I don't have to thin out the Smooth Prime much more than 5% to get it cover nicely.
Sunday 2
I managed to dig my teenage daughter out of bed (no mean feat) to help me turn over the wing. I did a little more touch up sanding and I sprayed the top of the port wing with two coats.
Monday 3
I finish sanded about 25% of the top surface this evening. I should have probably thinned out the finish coat of smooth prime more because it is not quite flat. I guess I didn't follow my 5 % rule closely enough.
Tuesday 4
Wednesday 5
No building
Thursday 6
No building
Saturday 8
I finish sanded the top surface and about half of the bottom of the wing. The top surface came out near perfect, any defects in the contour are barely detectable. Its amazing what small imperfections you can feel with your hand that are impossible to see with your eye.
Well its time for the annual on the Comanche and this year we decided to hire an A&P to come to the hanger to do the work. We find we can save a lot of money by pulling down the aircraft our selves. Trouble was it was cold, darn cold. We had kerosene heaters going flat out and we still didn't raise the temperature above freezing.
Monday 10
No building
Tuesday 11
I sanded the leading edge and all of the "fiddly bits" of the wings
Saturday 15
I didn't get down to the workshop for the rest of the week but I did get to finish off sanding the last of the wing today. The rest of the day was taken up with machining a fitting for my eye ball vents. I wanted to use 1.25" hose so I had to make up an adapter. After messing the first one up I got a good result.
Sunday 16
I fooled around a fair while getting the flaps correctly fitted up. I had lengthened it a bit because I had got a bit to eager when fitting them up the first time. For some reason I could only just get the flap to into the template correctly, I guess the filler must have a bit of an effect.
Monday 17
No building
Tuesday 18
Did a bit more work fitting the aileron
Wednesday 19
No building
Thursday 20
Finished off fitting up the aileron and the flap.
Friday 21
Saturday 22
I sanded back the last trim tab and found I still had to fill a few spots. I must admit to being tired of all of this darn sanding this month so I took some time out to clean up in the work shop. The last job was to trimmed up my NuLite. I found that the close spacing of the "Standard Six pack" on the Europa panel gave me problems with getting the NuLites to fit. One of them looked like it just wasn't going to fit and I sent a note to the manufacturer. They were terrific, the made a special order unti for me at no extra charge.
Sunday 23
I did a bit more on the annual of the Comanche. We got a bit smarter this time and moved it to a heated hanger.