Forward fuselage, vent brackets etc.: 5.5 hours

• Finished rough cutting and smoothing vent / 12 volt / control brackets left and right
• Deburred, smoothed, dimpled forward top fuselage structure
• Re-assembled above structure and clecoed skin on using 3 ratchet straps - the front corner of the skin is not matching up very well so I emailed Vans for suggestions.
• Started locating roll bar position
• Made a very small adjustment to the roll bar  - it took a long time with a lot of small tweaks

Vent brackets are pretty much finished:

Tightening down the skin:

Not a good fit here:

Or here:

Painting and misc: 3 hours

• Prepped and primed roll bar and canopy frame
• Bought defog fan mounting hardware and checked fit
• Removed paint from some interior parts needing repainting
• Started work on finishing left and right custom brackets for air vents and 12 volt power etc.

Initial vent brackets I designed and Front Panel Express cut out. Their process worked great. Great quality!

Priming roll bar and canopy frame:

Working on vent brackets (if my cad software skills were better Front Panel Express could have done this!):

Defog fan cut out and misc: 3 hours

• Finished defog fan cutouts
• Prepped canopy frame and roll bar for painting
• Re-organized shop area
• Deburred, edge rolled and dimpled parts of forward top skin

Dimpling top skin:

Defog cut out and interior painting: 3.5 hours

• Prepped and sprayed some interior panels with catalyzed gloss clear epoxy - 2k Aerospray by Eastwood. This product mixes in the spray can so very easy to use and no clean up.
• Worked on left defog fan cutout.

This clear epoxy is supposed to be very tough:

Defog fan cutouts almost done:

Defog fan cutouts: 3.3 hours

• Received two 12 volt 92mm fans for defog
• Finished fan cutout template
• Center punched screw holes and traced template onto skin
• Used unibit, dremel, nibbler and files to make cutouts - right side finished

Cutouts in progress:

Tracing template:

Misc errands and painting: 4 hours

• Dropped off my instrument panel blank with a local CNC machine shop to be cut out
• Picked up new horizontal stabilizer kit and Aeroled nav strobes package from Van's
• Prepped and primed canopy parts and controls sticks what had powder coat removed.

No photos today.

Defog fan cut out design: 3 hours

• Worked on defog fan cutout design
• I will be using two 92 mm fans for windscreen defog. This is similar to what Vans uses for the new RV-14.

No photos