Today was one of those days that the airplane made a transformation before my eyes. Well before my eyes, Jon, and Greg’s. That’s right, all three of us in the workshop today. It was quite fun!
We started by sanding. Jon started by finishing prep sanding the top of the left wing. While he was doing that, I contoured the epoxy wipe on the bottom of the right wing. When Greg arrived, he got to work on prep sanding the top of the right wing.
Once that was done we were going to start on the oil check door on the cowl. I had previously marked the location, but was somewhat unsure because the cowl didn’t fit on the airplane with the dip stick installed. The dipstick was way too long. So we decided before cutting a hole in the cowl, we would modify the dip stick and make sure.
In order to do that we mounted the engine.
Here you can see the dipstick extends out of the cowl boundary.
The solution was to cut a 3″ section out of the dipstick tube. So we chucked the tube in the lathe and cut out a section. It was then sanded and fiberglassed back together with 2 plies BID.
Then it was time to hang the wing. With as many times as we have done that, it went pretty quick. Since it was looking like an airplane, we had to set the canard in place and put the canopy back on. Oh yea, we mounted the speed brake too.
Here are some photos. Ryan got home and his comment upon entering the garaggio, “what you have here, an airplane?” Yes, yes I do!
the Garaggio 