First off, I apologize for my long pause in updating the site (notice the large jump on the HOBBS). There are several reasons for this, and some of them are actually good ones. I had a two week absence from building as I had a business trip to Wichita, KS where I got to tour the Cessna plant which was pretty cool.
Following the business trip, Sheryl and I spent a week with friends in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico at the all-inclusive Riu Palace resort. Sheryl finished her four open water dives to become a certified diver and I did four dives as well, including a pretty cool wreck dive where I seen a bull shark. We had a great time and I didn't think about the airplane, work or school for the entire week! It was a great recharge of the batteries as I am now "pedal to the metal" to finish this sucker!
From my last post, you remember I was working my way through the finishing touches on the cowl fiberglass work...trying to get it primer painted and off my plate. Here is some microballoon finish work to make the cowl match up nicely with the spinner.
I installed my lower scoop inlet ring with some flox. Notice the polished ring, looking good.
I also spent a fair amount of time polishing my hinge pin covers. I realized guys with polished airplanes and spinners can have them! Polishing is a pain...and messy. But, the results are pretty good....its not chrome-like, but passes the '3 foot' test nicely.
Doing the finish work around the lower inlet ring...I really liked how this was looking.
Getting the cowl sanded and prepped for paint...I was feeling like I was almost there. Little did I know...I wasn't, details coming.
Several shots of the finishing touches...
This is when the "detour" started. I was looking at how my Rod Bower ram air unit was lining up with my inlet ring and really wasn't happy with it. I kept thinking, well, it doesn't line up perfectly but I can make it work. But in the back of my mind, I knew that wasn't going to cut it. It was then, that a friend stopped by (a fellow RV7A builder/flyer) the hangar and I showed him my dilemma. After we talked through it, he said he would fix it if it were him...and I knew he was right. It would bug me forever if I didn't.
So, even though I knew this was going to cost me at least 20 hrs of work, it had to be done. I had to move the inlet opening down and slightly aft. All of the work I did to make it look pretty was for naught. As I always say, "if building one of these was easy, it wouldn't be any fun". It hurt to cut up my nice looking cowl...but onward I marched.
This pic shows how the alignment looked prior to the change. I had done a fitting with the ram air unit about a year ago and thought I had it looking nice. Only to find out that I had the ram air unit mounted wrong. After I mounted it correctly, this is what I was seeing.
So, the cutting begins...and in hindsight, I made this much harder than it needed to be. Suffice it say, there were times during this reconstruction that I thought the entire cowl had been lost and I would have to start over. It was that desperate at times. I kept sloggin' through it and kept my spirits up. Luckily, fiberglass is easy to fix if you screw up.
Here I am using a piece of soft aluminum as a sort of mold to lay up from the inside of the cowl. Getting that inlet ring in just the right place was a royal pain.
And the hodge podge patch job. Please don't think what you are seeing in these pics is in any way an elegant way to do fiberglass work. This just illustrates how I did this...and the fact that no matter how ugly it gets, it can be fixed. Don't lose hope...as you'll see. I know a lot of builders who have had to do major surgery to their cowls, this is not that uncommon.
Doing a fit check for alignment. Now she is lining up the way she's supposed to. I am already glad I spent the time on this detour.
Now to add a nice radius with my modeling clay.
Squint your eyes...it looks ugly here, but once I do my finish work, the beauty will come out. I am happy with it at this point...it was a painful process to get here.
The secondary benefit to moving the scoop down was I now no longer needed my bump to clear my mixture cable linkage. Len and I discussed this before I started as a nice added benefit.
A side view. I promise you this lower cowl is now "one of a kind". It probably could no longer be called a Sam James cowl...its a "Ron Duren special!"
And again, one last look at the front view. This was a painful, but satisfying detour. Next step is gluing the inlet ring back in place for a second time. While I do this fiberglass work, I am now shifting back to finishing up the electrical finally.
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