Cowling and Spinner work

Making progress on gap filler for aft side of prop. I decided to put my gap fillers  in with screws instead of rivets.

Gap filler after much sanding / fitting with backer plate for screwing into spinner:

I tried making a metal gap filler but I was not happy with it so I used the spinner cut outs with some added filler:

These boards clamped to the prop allow you to moved the blades through their range of motion and check the clearances on the spinner and gap fillers. A lot of fine tuning is involved...

Initial #30 holes drilled:

Checking spinner for wobble with a dial indicator. The spinner fit very nicely from the start. I pulled the dehydrator plugs and rotated the prop to check for alignment. With a little tweaking I got it to less than 1/32" variance.

Initial spinner fit:

First cut out done:

The hole drilling method worked well. The straight cuts were done with a hack saw.

I'm very happy with how the cowl extension turned out. Looking forward to working on this when the spinner is done.

Cockpit and cowling work

Two inch extension on top cowl curing. (This extension should allow the cowl to fit the longer engine mount.)

I used some flashing material for the extension mold.

Installed canopy roller tracks. Black delrin pieces will get trimmed for exact fit with tip up slider mod.

Riveted F-704K "upright capstrip" in place on left and right side. (light gray primer part just under roll bar)

Very happy with instrument panel placard from Front Panel Express.

Fuselage forward top skin is on!

• The last "major" piece of riveting is done. I riveted the forward top skin on using a combination of driven rivets and a large number of Cherrymax structural pull rivets.
• Before doing this I went over all the wiring and wheeled the fuselage outside to test the gps antennae.
• I also designed an instrument panel placard and programmed the G3X engine information system parameters. I'm still very impressed with the G3X Touch system.

Forward top skin is finished. Roll bar is partially installed. Very happy with the black powder coat.

It's difficult to get a good picture in the garage!

Riveting in progress. The Cherrymax rivets are noticeable close up but will be less so once the aircraft is painted. 

I also designed a placard for the instrument panel which I ordered from Front Panel Design. This placard has the required experimental aircraft passenger warning, instructions for the ballistic parachute and a stick grip button legend. It also will hide an access hole through the panel.

Early mock up of placard:

Primed and painted the exposed part of the inside of the forward top skin:

Making the cutouts for the defog fans: