When people inquire about flying for the airlines, I often get asked what my favorite layover is. The answer is always, “home!” Today I got the best layover in the system. I flew the all night red eye into Minneapolis for work yesterday and got home around 0600. It was nap time when I got in.
The shop foreman and Boston Terrier, Dudley, saw to it that I didn’t miss this extra workshop opportunity and woke me up when he figured I had enough sleep. What a guy! I had enough time before my next flight to put in an hour in the Garaggio!
So it was back to sanding. I focused on the areas that needed the most work. This was the trailing edge and the area outboard of the most outboard elevator hinge. The areas are tiny and require small sanding blocks and nimble fingers. Here are the tools I used. I wrapped 36 grit around the dowel.
By the time I got that area into contour I had about 15 minutes before I had to get the pilot costume on, so I took some measurements with the templates.
I was encouraged that the left and right halves of the canard are very closely mirror images of each other. The outboard sections are closest to the plans thickness as measured by the templates and the inboard areas are thicker. The gap between the template leading edges are 1/8″ at the tip and about 3/16-1/4″ at the root. At the trailing edge, the gap between the templates is just less than 1/16″ at the tip and just more than 1/16″ at the root. Again both left and right sides are very similar.
What that means is I am really near calling it quits on contouring the canard. I’m going to finness the shape a little bit more in a few localized areas and call it good. Can’t wait to get primer on it and have it in flying condition. As for now, my layover is over, I’m off to Vancouver via Phoenix.
the Garaggio 