I stopped by the airport this morning and signed the lease on the hangar at the South County airport (E16). This is so much nicer than our Bonanza hangar at Reid Hillview (KRHV). It is exactly what I was hoping for, a north facing hangar on a row with lots of other RVs. I’ll be moving in tomorrow!
Anyway, back to work. The overall shape of the canopy fairing is great, but there were a couple of low spots and some holes. I mixed up another small batch of filler and took care of those.
After the filler cured, I sanded it down. Since the shape of the fairing is now set, I pulled off the yellow electrical tape. I also pulled the rest of the plastic covering to take a look at the canopy. There are a few spots with overspray on it and some other bits of adhesive residue that needs to be cleaned off, but overall it looks great.
I pulled off the tail since it won’t fit in the truck with the tail on. While I had the horizontal stabilizer off, I added four more nutplates where the lower empennage fairing attaches to the longeron.
I added a couple of bolts in the tail so that any loads on the tailwheel are transferred into the structure during the ride to the airport. Without this, any vertical loads on the tailwheel would be applied to the bottom edge of this bulkhead.
I spent most of the day trying to get everything ready for the move tomorrow. The plane is off the wheel dollies, all of the tools are in the toolboxes and I’ve cleaned out underneath the airplane. I still need to get some stuff off the shelves, but everything else is ready to go.
