The best laid plans of mice and men……..

Well, the humidity did drop below 70%, but only because the temperature had soared to 28 deg. by 10 am when we were ready to commence spraying. Checking the forecast, it was heading for 34 today which proved to be accurate. As such there was total agreement that the paint would dry before it hit the fuselage, so Plan B was put into action.

Last night I finished sanding a minor wood repair on one of the ribs of the rudder which had been overlooked, and therefore covering of that surface was to be the task of the day.

Initiatially all went well with lining up the rudder and tacking it to the fabric, as previously with both elevators.. Whether is was the heat, overconfidence on my part or just Murphy’s Law, I managed to arrive at a situation were I attempted to glue both overlaps on the trailing edge at the same time. Believe me, it doesn’t work! So after some grim-faced contemplation, we decided that the only way to fix this was to apply an 80 mm wide tape strip to the trailing edge, which is of course what the Oratex instruction stipulates.anyhow.

Over lunch we resolved to take our time from now on and stay methodical with this job. The one upside to the high temperature in the shed was the greatly reduced drying time for the Oratex adhesive – like about 10 minutes!

In the end we decided that this episode had taught us some valuable lessons, and the Oratex rudder now looks quite presentable. And adjourned to Liz’s famous Spag Bol, washed down with a bottle of Shiraz Cabernet. All’s well that ends well!