Thought I just do a little painting jobthis afternoon, coating the canopy rails and aluminium cockpit surrounds. As always, by the time I sanded the surface rust and masked the surrounds, a couple of hours had whizzed by – I don’t think Laurie took much longer to spray the entire fuselage! So after two coats…

Finally the weather gods smiled on us and dropped the humidity below 70% so we could spray the top coat on. I’m using the royal plural here since Laurie did all the spraying, all I could contribute was mixing the 2 pack polyurethane and wiping down the plane with acetone. And a great job he…

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…

It’s March already! We’re supposed to be flying KYU by now. Wouldn’t have anything to do with adding more fabric covering jobs to the To Do list, would it? Speaking of fabric covering, the tailfeathers are done, put the finishing touches on today (well, Laurie might find a few more wrinkles to iron out. Unfortunately…

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…

Oratex day today, tackling port elevator, the one with the cut-out for the trim tab to add to the excitement. The time taken being super-careful with all the various steps paid dividend in the form of a satisfying result. Tomorrow is forecast to be the first day for a while when humidity is below 70%…

We temporarily abandoned the fun job of acetoning the remnants of the Polyfiber chemistry off the ailerons, as a window of opportunity opened hwere St. Peter was able to induct us into the wonderful world of Oratex fabric covering. While actually quite fun to do, there was a lot of stress involved in learning the…

Took off the fabric from the ailerons, not too much hard work. The basic wood structure is in remarkably good condition, no delamination, everything in as new condition except for a bit of minor wood repair. This shows the trailing edge on one of the ailerons where some damage was repaired in a kinda haphazard…

Last Thursday we took the ailerons off the wings at Mangrove, with the intention to closely inspect the hinges and associated fittings. This inspection is difficult to do at the back of the hangar, and we had suspected excessive free play in some of those connections. Here’s what we found and intend to rectify: In…

The battery setup is as good as finished, bar a few wire supports. This is the battery in its tray and with the antenna fitted. It can be installed in this configuration, taking care that the lower antenna section is inserted between the control cable runs in the fuselage. Before fitting this assembly I cleaned…