Down the final stretch now - putting it all together. This is really fun and while I now have to drive to the airport to work on the plane it's great to hang out and talk with folks that come by to see the project.
First thing I'm working on is getting the panel complete so I can get the systems working. The right panel has been reworked 6 times now - 3 for the gloss black and 3 times with the carbon fiber vinyl.
The original plan of using the gloss black was a good plan but it's really hard to paint that color and get it to look good. The radio stack needed to be refinished after cutting the holes for the auto pilot heads and enlarging the hole for the radio and the left panel came with the sky view and didn't have the intercom cutout so it needed to be finished. At this point I decided to try the vinyl and went ahead and bought $50 worth of it.
I'm really happy with how it turned out. I started with the right panel. For the first shot I tried to start at one edge and pull it on. It stretched and caused wrinkles so that method was out. It will stretch a bit but it's not that flexible. The second attempt went well. I let it warm a bit and placed it on a soft rubber mat and then just stamped the panel into it. That worked very well. I moved onto the radio panel and that came out pretty good but the lines in the pattern were a bit off. I could have lived with it though. Next was the left panel and I was getting pretty good at lining things up by now. That came out nice enough to cause me to take another shot at the right panel. If I had not had enough material I would have left it alone but I had just enough to try it one more time. It came out really nice and I'm glad I did it.
I plan on making sure the power is at the correct pins before I apply any power to any avionics. I expect to have power in the plane within the next couple of days.
Next week I'll be headed down to Chino for the Rotax service and maintenance classes, not cheap, but I always planned on taking these classes. I expect to have the engine running before the end of the month.
First thing I'm working on is getting the panel complete so I can get the systems working. The right panel has been reworked 6 times now - 3 for the gloss black and 3 times with the carbon fiber vinyl.
The original plan of using the gloss black was a good plan but it's really hard to paint that color and get it to look good. The radio stack needed to be refinished after cutting the holes for the auto pilot heads and enlarging the hole for the radio and the left panel came with the sky view and didn't have the intercom cutout so it needed to be finished. At this point I decided to try the vinyl and went ahead and bought $50 worth of it.
I'm really happy with how it turned out. I started with the right panel. For the first shot I tried to start at one edge and pull it on. It stretched and caused wrinkles so that method was out. It will stretch a bit but it's not that flexible. The second attempt went well. I let it warm a bit and placed it on a soft rubber mat and then just stamped the panel into it. That worked very well. I moved onto the radio panel and that came out pretty good but the lines in the pattern were a bit off. I could have lived with it though. Next was the left panel and I was getting pretty good at lining things up by now. That came out nice enough to cause me to take another shot at the right panel. If I had not had enough material I would have left it alone but I had just enough to try it one more time. It came out really nice and I'm glad I did it.
I plan on making sure the power is at the correct pins before I apply any power to any avionics. I expect to have power in the plane within the next couple of days.
Next week I'll be headed down to Chino for the Rotax service and maintenance classes, not cheap, but I always planned on taking these classes. I expect to have the engine running before the end of the month.
This is Awesome Jim. I would like to see it when its complete. - Sanket.
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