Cowl painting/wheel fairings
What do you call 2 rainy days in a row in Seattle? A weekend.
The weather lately has been a real downer. It’s nice all week and then cruddy on the weekend. I didn’t get in any flying this weekend at all.
I did work on painting the cowl and fitting the wheel fairings. During the week I put a thick coat of Poly Fiber UV Smooth Prime onto the cowl. The stuff has a ton of gunk in it. It took longer to mix than to apply.
Halfway through sanding I was wishing I hadn’t put nearly so much of it on. After a few days of sanding, I finally got it to the point where I thought it was good enough.
I sprayed on some gray primer. It looks OK for now, but it could really use at least another coat of the fill primer. Or hopefully the paint shop I end up using will just take care of it.
Today I worked on the wheel fairings. I previously got the two halves fitting together fairly well. I polished that up a bit and then drilled the two halves for fasteners. Countersink, nut plates, etc. I enlarged the hole on the bottom to make it big enough to fit the wheel.
I jacked up the plane with my new wing jacks, put the 1″ block on top of the tires, and then realized it was getting fairly late. Time to wrap up. I can hopefully get the wheel fairings finished in one more long session.
It’s a good thing Vans doesn’t make fiberglass planes, cause their f/g parts blow chunks. The parts don’t fit together, are not symmetrical, are filled with pinholes, have voids, and just plain look ugly. Can you tell I’m tired of working with fiberglass?