Finally Back At It Again – 4.5 hrs

Saturday Sep 29, 2012

Well, it’s been more than six weeks since my last post. In the interim much has happened. First, my mother died after a long illness and I had to take care of funeral details with my brothers. Then Denise and I departed for Italy on a 13 day cruise in the Mediterranean to celebrate our 25^th anniversary; a trip we had planned for many months. What a contrast. Oh, and in between my daughter drove my car through one of the garage doors. Fortunately the airplane was not damaged but it took time to patch up the door to secure the area. Plus I have been rebuilding a patio cover that was rotting away – a project I promised my wife I would finish a long time ago. Those are just a few of my distractions from airplane building.

After things began to settle out I started thinking about where I was in the build process and I realized after six weeks the details were hazy. I had five or six different subprojects I was juggling when I stopped but now I was unsure about the sequence of events I had so clearly laid out in my head. So it may take some time to build up momentum again.

After looking over the parts I had “in process” I decided to step back and do something I had been putting off before the hiatus and that was to paint the interior sides of the cockpit. A year ago or more I decided to leave the sides bare because I was planning to install side panels from Classic Aero Interiors and the side panels would be covered. But since then I have become more sensitive to weight issues and have decided that I may just install arm rest pads and the side panels would then be exposed. So in retrospect I wish I had painted those surfaces before riveting the skins on. Now it is more of a hassle to paint them but I figured doing that would get a nagging task off my list and help me get back into the build process gradually.

So I spent several hours masking the interior of the cockpit leaving only the surfaces I wanted to paint exposed. That includes the gold anodized bulkhead parts of the main wing spar that are exposed in the cockpit. This is why I save the paper that Vans uses to pack the big kits – for masking for painting.

I sprayed a light coat of Ekoprime on the surfaces first. That died quickly since it was a warm, dry day today. Then I put several light coats of JetFlex on to match the rest of the interior except the footwell area which is still the darker Rustoleum hammered gray I applied before I discovered the Jetflex. The contrast looks pretty good – kinda like I planned it all that way from the start.

That is one small step back on the path to finishing this monster. And now my next step is a little clearer.