Airport Assembly - Page 121.

May 2, 2005:  This is a bracket I made for the installation of auxiliary microphone and headphone jacks to be mounted under the throttle quadrant.  I have to add this piece to the primer session I am planning soon.  The other pieces to be primed include the wing root fairings, the aluminum fairings that go under the horizontal stabilizer, and the filler plates that go behind the propeller blades.

And here is where it will go.  There is one more rivet hole hiding behind the throttle.  The metal plate in the photo above will be angled down and back from the throttle quadrant plate seen in the photo below.

The session today was 3.9 hours before I started cleaning up at 8 PM to leave the airport.  I passed through the airport gate at 8:19 PM.

May 3, 2005:  Tuesday morning saw a bit more work on my commercial web project.  I had the last 1-hour priming session on the driveway after lunch and then packed up my air compressor for the ride to the airport.  The photo below shows the two filler plates that will be installed behind the propeller blades in today's session.  As you can see, only the inside was primed in today's session at home.  I got to the airport around 4 PM again.

Four big rivets in each is all it takes to secure them to the spinner plate.

The auxiliary microphone and headphone jacks are now firmly in position.  I had to remove the engine control panel from the main panel in order to squeeze the rivet in the center.  I realized that I have to label all the controls, so I will make up the labels and place them over the rivets and avoid additional painting of the engine control mounting panel.  I also have to get under there and secure a number of wires with tie-wraps.  I primed the bracket on both sides, then painted the outer surface that can be seen from the cockpit.

The fiberglass cap to the vertical stabilizer was sanded and trimmed of excess fiberglass and epoxy resin from the first session that fitted the balsa plank to it yesterday.  This is in preparation for today's fiberglass session on this same part.   And there is the evidence that the air compressor is at the end of the work table.   I stopped at ACE Hardware on the way to the airport to get a 10-foot length of chain to secure the compressor tank when I am not in the hangar.

I put in three thin strips of fiberglass cloth in the corners where the balsa meets the fiberglass shell, and two layers of fiber glass cloth across the full surface of the balsa plank.  I will be cleaning the excess material off with the Dremel sanding drum tomorrow.

I also picked up some long 4-40 screws at ACE to secure the tail light assembly in the rudder bottom cap.  The top screw went in just fine, but the bottom screw sheared off just below the surface of the fiberglass shell.  I guess the epoxy soaked tissues I used as filler in there worked very well indeed.  I had to drill out some of that epoxy/tissue mix to remove the remaining screw.  I then put some tissue in the remaining epoxy mix from the work done in the photo above.  I used a tooth pick to push the mixture into the enlarged hole and cleaned away the excess before cleaning up the bench of the epoxy and other waste from the fiberglass work.  I will drill and tap another 4-40 screw hole in the epoxy/tissue filler after it is fully-cured and hard enough to drill.  Since the clear tail light lens is GLASS, I have put it safely away until this process is completed.