Its been a couple days since the last post, and I did get to work on the airplane for a short while sanding three days ago. There was not much to show for it so forgive me for not putting up a blog post and another picture of a microed surface that still needs work. The last couple days have been fun R&R camping with friends. I consider it “pumping up my tires” a little bit to get back after things. Plus, like many builders that are waist deep in their project, my friends are beginning to wonder if I’m still alive and well. Rest assured, I am.
Oh, on Friday, Greg and I were supposed to work on the EZ in the morning, but it was too nice of a day outside and Greg had a vision problem. He just couldn’t see himself sanding on one of those perfect flying days we only seem to get about 5 times a season in Minnesota. So he called and twisted my arm to go for an EZ ride. It was smooth as silk, and he gave me most of the stick time to do as I pleased. I did steep turns, and stalls, and slow flight, did a take off, an approach, etc. All in trying to get some more feeling for what my Ez might fly like.
Ok so that brings us to today. I got home from camping with a little extra pep in my step, so I started back into the project. I did some sanding and then it was time to start disassembling. The canard, canopy, and cowls all came off. Ryan then helped me take the wings off as well. The reason I am disassembling is we have come to the point where we are moving on to the next step, epoxy wipe. I am happy enough with the surface, and feel like we are at the point of diminishing returns for the effort we are putting in. So onward!
While everything was disassembled and we are reconfiguring the workshop, I took a few hours to clean and organize some things. Don’t get me wrong, to the outsider, it is still a mess. But to me, it is just a little bit more organized and clean. Of course, the supervisor had to come and audit my work to make sure it was up to his standards. Dudly runs a tight ship, and don’t let him catch you in the workshop without a soft pile of blankets or a bed for him…
Alright, so once things were put back into some semblance of order, I got back to work. Really all I had time to do by this point in the evening was to sand the top surface of the ailerons for bonding. Then I mixed up micro and filled them. I did this in place on the wings because there was a few small spots where the seams could use a bit of work by adding material back. We will see if this is strong enough.
Also, while I was slinging epoxy, I decided to mix up a batch of micro light filler. There were still some areas that were just a little to deep and big to want to fill with the epoxy wipe. So I took this opportunity to fill them. I should be able to sand all that our relatively quickly tomorrow. If all goes well, and I can get the aileron surfaces to “flow” into the surrounding wing surfaces I may be able to epoxy wipe tomorrow. If not, certainly Tuesday!
Operation Prime or Bust! So far I am thinking it is possible to get everything primed before I go back to work, we will see as the week progresses.
the Garaggio 