It's been a while..

It’s been a while since i last updated my Blog, lots of things have been happening since then, Alex is now 9 months old 2 top and 2 bottom teeth and charging, he is crawling and starting his first words, mainly just mimicking what we are saying, so cute and funny. It wont be long before he is walking and into everything.

Alex and me at Jenolan Caves

I finally upgraded the sail on my glider, i think the old one had more than 350hrs on it, I've only flown the new sail twice, it’s flying ok so far, light handling not too sure on the speed as haven't been able to do any real speed runs, I'm sure that there will be more tuning needed as the sail settles into the new frame.

 

The marsking took hours to get sorted



The new cabin paint scheam, Looks good with the blue i think..

I’ve decided not to repaint the dash, too much work too pull it all apart, plus there is the problem of putting it all back together, bound to have issues there and I'm not that good when it comes to electrics. I painted the baggage area and roll hoop with a light mat grey, i think it should look really good with the new seats, seatbelts and side panels. Its been so long i cant remember where all the interior covers go, there are some smaller ones that don't seam to go anywhere, the others i have paint stripped ready for a new coat of mat grey, everything is starting to come together.

 The new Canopy ready for installation.

I have finally finished off my Canopy, i got the new canopy a couple of months ago, i didn't waist any time as it was starting to get a little cooler during the days so i got it set up, trimmed and drilled, so far i have only fitted the rear screen, waiting for it to warm up a little more before i attempt to finish of the FWD section, i am being super carful this time around, i wont even open the canopy on the aircraft with it cleco’s in place, I'll wait till i have it all riveted and screwed in place before i do that, it’s way too risky of it cracking again.. I've decided not to make up the weather strips this time round, instead I'll seal the canopy when its shut using sealant and mould release that way it should be a tight close mating surface between the canopy and roll over frame.

 RH Elevator finished

I have finally finished off the Hori stab, elevators, Vert stab and rudder, that took me a while as i didn't know where to start not having pre drilled skins, i ended up finding some predrilled skins that i had forgotten about for the elevators that i originally bought for the rough empennage i bought from the US, (the one I scrapped it as the workmanship was so poor nothing could be saved). I’m getting ready to set up the hori stab for drilling, i need a few packers before i start, i need a .125” packer under the front spar, the aircraft’s original hori stab had .250” packers, i think this might be for flight trimming so I'll probably go with the same.

 I’m guessing things will move quite fast now, I've got a heap of things that are finished ready for installation, the only things i need to make still are the interior side panels and get the interior re upholstered and of course mount the FWD section of the canopy to the frame, then sort out the paperwork and start flight testing again..