Day 5

There's light at the end of the tunnel. Today I got the oil inspection door fit and riveted to the cowling before flipping the plane and hanging the engine. Once the engine was fitted (and so much easier than a Lycoming I must say) it provided the necessary reference points via the spinner backplate to mount the cowling.

Fitting the cowling to the fuselage was the same thing many times: Get it as close to centered as possible, drill one hole and cleco that and determine what part of the cowling has to be trimmed to fit against the fuselage. Take the cowling off, trim it, put it back, drill another hole, cleco it, mark the cowling, take it off...lather, rinse, repeat. It went on and came off 4 or 5 times before it finally fit correctly and then it was drilled and clecoed all the way around. It felt awesome to see the cowling on the airplane!

And as soon as it was on the plane, I could measure to make the location for various inlet templates and make 3 cutouts on the cowling. And then the cowl came back off to bond the inside part of the inlet scoops.

All the bonding was done at the end of the day, which is apparently how they do it at the build center. Much of the day is work in preparation for the evening fiberglass layups, and this day was no different. At the end of the day we bonded the internal parts of the cowling, fairings over the horizontal stabilizer, put a layup over the rivets on the oil inspection door, etc.

Then we cleaned up and I started getting my things together to leave. Nick agreed to let me have a little going-away present which he was kind enough to cut in half so I could throw in my truck for the drive home. It is going to be my Lightning Simulator, and I'll make some updates about that as I go along.

I'm planning to be back in Shelbyville November 17th, and my plane should be out of the paint shop and ready for week 2 of the build. Pictures from Day 5 and the Lightning Simulator are on the Pictures page.