Joshua's RV-9A Project

More fun with cowling to start the day: added some glass to a spot in the nose of the upper cowling that was thinned out by sanding, and laid up a couple plies at the sides of the oil door (+ peel ply).  Took the extra epoxy and squeegeed it on the inside of the top cowl.

Taking a break from fiberglass work, I filled the brake system with fluid.  This was pretty easy with the use of the brake bleeder tank I picked up from ATS, which came with the correct bleeder fitting for the calipers.  I filled up the tank with fluid, attached a NPT-to-hose-barb fitting to the brake reservoir in place of the cap, with a clear nylon tube to the empty fluid canister, and pumped away.  Once a stream of uninterrupted fluid had flowed out of the reservoir, I switched sides and repeated.  No leaks apparent, but I still need to climb in and test the system under pedal pressure, as well as check the operation of the parking brake.

Back to work: spent considerable time sanding down the fillet of Sika at the canopy base.  I decided to do a layup of glass here, for a number of reasons.  To enable that, I pared down the Sika fillet, exposing some plexi above it, and some aluminum below it.  Scuffed everything up well, and laid out edge lines with electrical tape.  I cut a ply of “Rutan Bid” glass cloth, and a ply of a cloth with a tighter, denser weave to place on top of that; both were curves cut on a bias, for a smooth fairing with no ply overlaps.  Mixed a batch of epoxy with added black colorant, and laid up both plies of glass, plus a layer of dacron peel ply.  Today was the first I’ve used the peel ply, so we’ll see tomorrow if I did it right.

One more little item on the list, plugged into the VP-X and updated it to the latest firmware version.  The cheap USB to RS-232 converter I bought for $9 is junk and won’t install on my computer, so I haven’t been able to service the APRS unit.  I’ll borrow the one from work that I was using before, and find a better one to get for the shop.

Also looked at the fit of the Crow crotch straps, which look like they’ll fit into the brackets without trouble.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 14th, 2012 at 10:38 pm and is filed under Cowling & Baffles, Electrical, Gear & Fairings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.