Joshua's RV-9A Project

Scraped & sanded the RH half of the top cowl.

8+ hours sanding, scraping, filing, smoothing, and what to show — a floor full of epoxy dust; the bottom cowl sanding finished (save for the side hinge joint, which I’ll final sand with the cowls joined), and the oil door area of the top cowl.

On the up side — sanding the neat epoxy is drudgery, but because there’s no glass, it doesn’t leave you full of prickles at the end of the day…

Nearly two hours sanding on the cowling’s new epoxy shell.  I figure I’m about 10% done with it.  Joy.

Started the day with another layer of epoxy on the cowling halves.  Should be ready for sanding on Monday.

Covered critical parts with plastic and washed the engine with Dawn and lots of water, to remove the fiberglass dust left behind from all the sanding over the last months.  Dried with the air hose, towels, paper towels, and plugging in the engine heater.  It really starts to get warm quite rapidly.

Trimmed & smoothed the front baffle, and cut some pieces of airseal, then drilled and punched holes.  I won’t do the final attach of that until I have a chance to re-fit the cowls to check for proper clearances & airseal contact.  Red RTV’d the perimeter of the baffles all around the engine, and filled various holes at corners & such.

Touched up a couple dings in the engine mount powdercoat with the powdercoat-colored paint.

Sanded the rear edge split lines of the cowling to provide an even 1/16″ gap to allow for paint.  Sanded the gearleg cutout to center the leg, by widening it to one side & straightening the lines.

Rolled on a layer of slightly thinned epoxy, then later in the day, a squeegeed second layer.  It’ll get another layer in the morning, then allowed to fully cure before sanding.

Spent a bunch of time wrestling with adel clamps in the process of installing a metal piece for the last 16″ or so of the breather tube.  The end of the tube is cut to align against the left exhaust pipe.

Long week at the various jobs, and we’re now into the busy season–job work every weekend, so project work will drop off rapidly until mid-June.

Sanded micro filler on the top skin.  Applied SuperFil to pinholes there, and on the cowlings.

Attended the quarterly gathering of the MN RV Builder’s Group this morning; saw the new -9 under construction by a repeat builder, including a nice panel being built with triple-screen G3X and GTN650.  After scoping out the plane and downing some danishes, I was able to corner Tom Berge, who does nosewheel transition training locally.  Picked up the info I needed to plan for transition training, and Tom also said he would be willing to conduct the first flight.  He recommended I get in touch to start transition training when I’m about a month from first flight, and after getting current again.

With that sorted out, back home and time to finish the plane…  First thing, as usual, was to sand down the layers which were applied yesterday.  With that, I was able to finish shaping the nose, straighten up the oil door cutout, smooth the side hinge lines, and get the top skin/canopy “air scoop” fixes to the right shape.

The entire plane–and builder–being now covered in fiberglass dust, and given the lovely weather outside, I decided to roll the fuselage into the driveway and wash it.  That went well, and I quickly found out where the leaks were.  As I was rinsing it off, a local couple we know who had been out on their bikes rode up to check it out; Ben is a retired airline pilot and interested in the project, so we looked & chatted about that, as well as the various animals that have taken over the yard.

After drying (microfiber is amazing) and wiping up after the leaks, it was back into the shop for more work.  Displaced the canopy for access and filed the aft edge of the canopy joint micro back to where it ought to be, then filled all the gaps between the skin and the weatherstrip seal with Proseal.  Once set, I’ll trim any goobers and it should provide a much higher level of water/dust ingress protection.  During this process, neighbor Jeff stopped by to check on the progress, having seen the plane in the driveway earlier, so chatted for awhile about various things.

Final task for the evening was to spread a coat of epoxy on the interior surface of both cowls.  This will be left as-is, to provide a solid shell which will protect the fiberglass against oil and other fluids and ease cleanup of drips.  The interior of the cowls will be painted white to lighten up the engine compartment for preflight inspection, and make any leaks easier to spot.  Also added some micro to fill divots in the canopy joint filler.

Milestone: rolled over 1700 hours on the project today.

Spent most of the day today doing cowling-related things.  This weekend might see the transition from shaping work to finishing work (finally). Started with more sanding of stuff that had been applied previously: the nose ring and outboard corners.  They’re looking decent; one more layer of micro applied to fill holes and divots.  As long as I was mixing up micro, I put some along the side hinge lines to smooth those transitions, as well as around the oil door, after wrapping it in tape.  Later, after the micro had hardened but not fully cured, I was able to shave off the excess and pop the oil door out.

Also dealt with the side hinge pins: bent a 90* angle in the front, and another bend to allow the pin to come out from the slot.  Wrapped it around a #8 screw to make a ring to secure it.  Seems to have come out OK, and it’s in the spirit of the Van’s hinge eyelet, but a little more elegant.  Not nearly as pretty as the recessed coverplates, etc that are often showcased, but it’ll fly…I can make a fancy coverplate and fill the screw hole before paint, if I want.  Riveted a nutplate to each side of the cowl with an aluminum backing plate for reinforcement.

A similar thing was done to the inner side of the air intakes where the cowls overlap — drilled for #8 screw, installed nutplates with an aluminum doubler.  Upper cowl countersunk for tinnerman washers.

Perhaps against my better judgement, decided to bite the bullet and add a “ramp” of micro to the top skin ahead of the canopy, to cover up the “air scoops” on the canopy to fwd skin joint.  That means I’ll have to spray primer on this, because it’s pretty ugly now with the sanded skin and white micro filler.

Also printed & installed placards for tank capacity at the fuel selector, and installed the dataplate which has come back from the engravers along with the fuel caps.

Sanded and shaped the micro filler added to the cowl in the last session.  Refit the cowl to the plane and made up a “tool” to sand the nose to a consistent gap behind the spinner: a piece of plywood drilled with the prop hole pattern, and some cardboard shims to adjust the spacing.  By bolting this up in place of the prop/spinner, I could set the space between the plywood and the cowl nose.  Adjusting the spacers so that my sanding block (long piece of 1×3 with abrasive glued to one side) would slip between the board and the cowl, and sanding until it moved freely, worked quite well.  It turned out that a couple areas of the nose needed more filler, so the cowl was removed again and more micro applied.  More sanding to ensue on the weekend…

Decided to quit reinventing the canopy seal wheel, at least for now (since they’re easy to keep fussing with over the long term)…located & installed the factory canopy seals.  The white P-profile foam one in the front, which looks like it will work, and the teardrop-profile one at the canopy bow.  This one is made of a more slippery rubber, rather than the foam of the one I had tried earlier; that fact allows the canopy to close with much greater ease–the foam rubber one was “grippy” on the plexi as it closed.  I installed this with taller part of the teardrop facing forward, so a valley is formed between the seal and the rear window plexi; the hope being that this will provide a channel to direct any water that enters the gap down to the sides.

More work on the list:

• Installed metal locknuts on the baffle tension rods.
• Torqued & marked the “squeeze bolt” on the fuel servo-airbox ring.
• Cleaned the airbox, fully assembled with bolts.  Torqued & marked all the airbox bolts.
• With the canopy seal sorted for now, reinstalled the EFIS and tested.

The “before airport” items on the punch list now fit onto a single printed page, so we must be getting closer, right?

I’m pushing to get the cowling to a point where I can start doing finishing work on it, rather than shaping work.  I think when we get to the point of spraying the cowl, it will be a major milestone, and the light at the end will feel much brighter.

Spent several hours sanding the cowling today — smoothing edges of the cooling ramp layups, truing edges, aligning things, sanding down filler, and initial shaping of the micro blobs on the outboard nose sides, to make the top & bottom even.

Added another inch to the gear leg slot, which should provide just enough clearance from the prop to get the thing on & off without dinging either it or the prop (after protecting the prop blades with something).

When all the sanding was done, took the halves outside and sprayed them down with the hose to remove all the dust, then dried them inside.  Applied another batch of micro to the nose ring, filling the spots where the gap was wider than desired.  This will be sanded back to provide a consistent even gap all around, and will probably take another layer or two of micro to finish off.

Drilled the gap filler pieces for nutplates, and countersunk those 3 holes in the spinner.  Primed and riveted the spinner bulkheads, gap fillers, and gap filler flanges.  At this point, the spinner is ready for fiberglass finishing.

Installed the radios into the avionics stack.  All that remains to reinstall is the EFIS, which I’ve left out for now while I continue to ponder canopy seals.

Pulled the dessicant plugs from the engine to bake, as they were beginning to turn color.