Today we finished covering the ailerons with sky blue Oratex. It’s fair to say that this job was quite nerve-racking due to the constant attention required for all the various individual operations and their sequencing. A moments inattention can have potentially disastrous consequences. Because of the high cost of the Oratex fabric, it is not economical to order extra length to cater for any eventual mishaps. Anyway, operating as a team worked really well, for instance Laurie often yelled “paper!” if it looked like I was going to use the iron without using the protective butcher paper underneath. We could have used longer work benches as the old doors are only 2.1m long while each of the four ailerons measures 2.4 m, but it was alright. The new small iron from Aircraft Spruce arrived just in time this morning before we started heat-stitching the Oratex to the aileron structure.

Works really well right out of the box (once the US plug was exchanged for the Oz one), and the digital temperature settings are easy to adjust. It has a red light which starts to flash a few degrees before reaching setpoint, but I suspect it has other function. Since there was no instruction manual (which, being blokes, we would not have read anyway), those functions will remain a mystery for the time being.

All in all we’re quite satisfied with the result. The lumps and bumps are due to the plywood structure underneath the Oratex fabric, and basically unavoidable unless you want to add a lot of filler (and weight!).

So we’re now waiting for a low humidity day (<70% RH) that’s not above 28 degC. so Laurie can spray the top coat onto the fuselage. The idea then is to take the fuselage to Warkworth where Rob Moffat has kindly offered his M200 trailer as temporary storage. This would free my shed for bringing the wings up from Mangove Mountain, to be stripped of the old Polyfiber fabric, cleaned, inspected and epoxied and finally covered in white Oratex which we already have to hand.

In the meantime we have numerous “small” jobs to do, stay posted.