Instrument Side Panels - vacuum bagging

Finish sanded layer of SuperFill that was applied to panel mold.  Waxed mold and misted a few coats of mold release.  

Our goal is to surface match the side panels to the center panel.  This requires a material buildup to equal the thickness of the center aluminum piece plus the carbon fiber overlay.  A quick calculation determined that we would need six layers of fiberglass plus two layers of carbon fiber.  A 50:50 resin to fabric ratio requires 128g of resin.  That's a lot!

Eight hours later...  Removing the bagging material and bleeder-breather layers revealed a very tacky part that had clearly not yet finished curing under room temperature and good vacuum. 

We'll leave the part exposed to a strong morning sun for a few hours to finish the cure process.  

Wing tip - inside plug fabrication

Used 88g of liquid urethane expanding foam poured onto release play lining wingtip inside surface. The 15x expansion created a good size plug.  Next step, fiberglass wet layup using the plug to press the glass to the wingtip surface.  We may even vacuum bag the plug to the surface so as to minimize epoxy weight and maximize adhesion.

Fabricated wing tip mold plug.

Instrument Panel - composite sides

Sanded mold for side panel pieces.  Applied a layer of SuperFill. Will be ready to sand and start vacuum bagging this evening.

Avionics wire cleanup

Continued with avionics wire bundle cleanup.  Disconnected, clipped, and re-pinned a number of wires.  Ran two wires from Hxr JA-25 to Garmin GTN-750 DSUB-47 1001.

Arjan & Mike working it out

Left and Right Switch Pannel

Installed switches into left and right switch panels.

Beringer Brake System

Installed the brake fluid reservoir to the firewall assembly.  Fabricated the left and right brake lines and installed them to the brake line fittings.  Installed the brake hoses.

Spring is here ;-) Tail wheel mount, Control, CHT & EGT Wiring Connections

Finally the WX broke so Mike and I were able to work on the plane again.  We've both agreed that the plane will be done by Oshkosh (just not sure which one but we aren't telling anyone that part when they ask which one).  

Davin and I worked on finishing up installation of the beautifully chromed tail wheel mount assembly.  Installed the tail wheel spring mount.  Reluctantly had to add six CS 4-4 pop rivets to the bottom of the rear bulkhead due to space constraints.

Davin Squeezing Rivets

Wheel Mount Assembly

Aft Bulkhead

Prop Governor Linkage

Lower battery bus

Mike mounted the control cables.  We also finished up the CHT and EGT wiring connections.