Tomorrow I'm heading to Hungry Valley to meet up with some other Touareg owners for a 4x4 weekend.  Just getting a few things packed, including a towstrap :)

Filed the holes as close to round as possible and test fit the cover plates.

Here's the cover plates on top and the backing plate below.

Backing plate got a 7/8" hole in the center with a cut towards the hinge pin.  Drilled and clecoed into place.

There's plenty of room for the hinge pin to come out even with the little bend I'll put on it at the end.

I secured the backing plate with flox and let it cure for a while.  Lately I've been using 205 as it cures much faster than 206.  Had I known this in the beginning I would have used 205 exclusively.  Cover in place and holes for the screws.  I'll sand it perfectly flush later.

Nutplates installed.

Secured with screws and sanded smooth.  I likes.

For a long time now I've wanted to make the skirts hang down past the longeron but I felt that now was not the time to do it.  I still plan on it but instead of aluminum, they will be fiberglass.

Fabricated the canopy shock mounts and attached them to the canopy.

Now the next few pictures I'm getting ready to paint the canopy dash with some aviation grade flat black enamel.

The next pictures, which I'm not placing on the site, are pictures of me cussing and swearing up and down the block because the damn rattlecan kept shooting buggers out instead of paint.  I removed all the paint and decided to do another approach.  The old man suggested we put some fake leather on the panel.  Why not?  Got some from JoAnn Fabrics, some 2mm foam backing, and some spray adhesive.  Looking good!

Here you can see how much I trimmed off the ears of the front skin.  I'll just fill this with flox.

Got the JetFlex out again and shot the canopy frame.

Bucked the right side of the top skins.  Dads removing any boogers that were left over from the gun.

As we were riveting, we left the canopy frame outside in the sun.  Well it turns out that the adhesive spray we used just wasn't cutting it.  The glue was letting go and the fabric was starting to bulge.  I don't like bulges on my dash.  So we took all of it off, cleaned off the glue and bought some contact cement.  This stuff is tough.  Here we are laying up the new piece of fake leather.

Time to get that canopy on for a trial run. 

Ok, so I need more pictures of me in the builders log to prove I made it, well, at least the canopy.

All the nuts are on the canopy at this stage and here's my tape line for the fiberglass and paint.

Time for the first layup of BID.

Chopped the matting around the ram air and did a micro balloon layup to smooth things out.

Drained about two cups of oil and installed and wire tied the oil quick drain.  Then added 8 qts of straight mineral oil.

They look good.

Final rivets in the wing.

Cut the holes for the nav/strobe lights into the wingtips.

I decided to epoxy (flox) the nutplates for the clear lenses instead of using rivets which you can see.  I got this idea from Dan, thanks!

I had taken off the Airflow Performance fuel pump to diagnose the pump not working and left it on the floor and pops ran it over with the car.

Not.  After receiving a ton of very helpful emails on how to diagnose the fuel pump not working I ended up calling AP and they said to send it in.  I found that the resistance between the pos and neg leads of the the pump was only 2.2 Ohms.  Sounds like an internal fault to me.  I checked and double checked and triple checked my wiring and it's definitely up to snuff.  Bad pump.

One more layer of micro balloons goes on the canopy.

I stole the plans for the aileron pushrod wind breaker from Sam Buchanan's website and pops made up a pair of them.  He RTV'd the material (dacron) to the circular aluminum brackets that he made as well.  This will definitely keep a bunch of wind out of the cockpit.

Finally got the wingtip light fairings mounted.  The trick about epoxying the platenuts in place instead of flush rivets really paid off in a nice clean look. 

Arrived a the hangar one hour later and everything was quite.  Both my sub-lessors were out.  Here's Hal's little Bipe and Asif's Cozy, and pops documenting the trip.

Recently I took Volkswagen of America to task for having my vehicle in the shop *forever* to fix the Tire Pressure Monitoring system.  They agreed to give me a new vehicle after filing a lemon law claim.  I haven't received the new vehicle yet but here's mine acting up again.  I drove home with the so-called flat, and it drove fine.

Car and Jack.  These side mount screw jacks are awesome because you don't have to put the jack directly under the lift point.

I had previously installed these little screw clamps on each gear leg, they work beautifully. 

Canopy latch fingers get a coat of paint.  I've seen some planes were these puppies were completely rusted.

New tool chest for the hangar.

New location of the plane, now it sits laterally in the garage, with the tail above the beams.  Now I can finish the canopy.

Here is the Bob Snedaker empennage fairing.  Fits a whole lot better than Vans did.  There is still about a 3/16th gap on the right leading edge.  I'll fill that in with flox.

And the lower emp fairing.  There a gap at the intersection of the top and bottom fairings.  I may just leave them be.  Kinda getting tired of fiberglass work lately.

On too the canopy latch fingers.  Since you can't see what is going on in the placement of these I did a multiple run of duct taping the fingers on then noting if the latch clasped the finger properly.  Eventually I was able to get the left side latch positioned properly and drilled a #40 hole to retain it.  But I ran into a slight problem where the hole into which it slides through wasn't quite deep enough in the rear.  So I sanded it until it fit perfectly.

Then......  Well, here's the look of my dad knowing that he created a boo boo on my little friend the airplane. 

The canopy has very very little clearance over the front skin when it's opened initially.  I've already trimmed the leading edge skin back so that it clears.  But with just clecos holding the skin in place it is possible to have both skins fight for the same airspace.  Which is what happened.  And the canopy fore skin :) lost.  It got a little bent.  Easily repairable though.  Shit happens.

Instead of one large washer taking up the space on the rudder control horns I used to thin washers on either side of the horn.

Needing a gasket on my access cover plates I experimented with RTV sticking to saran wrap.  Yep, doesn't stick.  Laid up a thin layer of RTV and then plastic then the covers and screwed them together.  We'll see tomorrow how it works out.

Since there was a small gap in the leading edge of the fairings-etc.com emp fairing I placed a layer of UHMW tape on the fuselage under the gap, all around the fairing.  Mixed some flox and spread it evenly about 1.5 inches wide and screwed everything together.  We'll see how this turns out tomorrow too.

Here's something I will be happy to not see anymore, friggen sanding dust.

The canopy goes up.  The canopy comes down.

I had to file a bit of the metal on the inside of the square holes for the canopy latch fingers.  When the canopy is lifted using the outside lift handle, the canopy flexes some and the latches can catch on the aluminum.  I just took off enough to allow it to lift more smoothly.

Gratuitous shots of the plane.

And some views of the struts and panel.

I spent the prior two days getting tools ready, cleaning the shop, placing parts into the car and plane, securing the rudder and elevators and basically going nuts trying not to forget anything. 

Made some rudder stops by drilling a hole into the rudder stops and made a U shaped piece of wire to fit each side.  Works well and I'll probably make a couple of nice pieces for when she has to sit outside overnight sometimes.  Tied them down with wire-ties for the trip.

I plastered the plane with blue painter's tape to cover every crack and crevice.  It was supposed to rain today and I didn't want to end up with a soaking wet interior, especially since I haven't riveted the top forward skin on yet, I'm saving that for last.

Wouldn't you know it, the weatherman was totally incorrect.  Here's what I saw, don't know what he was smoking the night before but it must have been good stuff.

Also, trying to find a suitable rig to haul this to the airport was a pita as well.  I probably called about 30 u-rent places.  None of them had a trailer wide enough (91").  And I didn't want to take a chance on a regular tilt-up car hauler.  This is an A model.  Add the height of the VS and the car hauler and even if it's close I didn't want to take any chances running into an overpass or low slung wires.   I finally found the perfect rig, but I'll get to that in a minute.

Every gathered around at 8:00 and we proceeded to get the plane out of it's temporary (almost 2yrs) shelter.  I placed a tie down eye bolt into the aft tie down fixture and added two bags of lead shotgun shell shot and a 33lb dive belt to the eyelet.  These were all connected with big heavy wire-ties.  It was a perfect amount of lead so that one person could easily push the tail down so that it would clear the garage door.  With 5 people, we slowly tilted down the ass end and rolled her outside so she could gleam in the sunlight for the first time.  What an awesome sight.  Was I happy?  YOU BET!

Ok, the truck, oops, I mean Semi!  If you every need to move an airplane anywhere in the LA Basin, with or without wings on Navarro's Towing is who you want 1-800-489-3666.  Turns out they do this kind of stuff all the time.  And I can say that they did an absolutely fantastic job.  Here's what you get;  A semi towing a tilting bed, low-boy trailer, with a wood deck so you can drill and screw tie downs into it until you are blue in the face.  The trucks on the trailer move forward hydraulically and the rear end comes down flush with the street.  It's so low that it only took three of us to drag the plane up onto the ramp and all the way forward.  We drilled wood 2x4 blocks in front and behind each wheel.  Strapped down each wheel with giant straps and tied down the rear to keep it from swinging from side to side.  Of course, with David and Mike and my dad on the job, there was a lot of cameras snapping and some heavy duty filming gear spinning away.

Ok, lets get on the road. 

Guess where we are now!

Taking off all that blue tape and the plastic on the bubble too.

I'm not even flying yet and the chino flys have made their attack.

Thanks too all of you that helped to make this a safe, enjoyable day, especially you Dad.  Without your help I would still be pounding rivets.  Later that day we had a BBQ and we all got drunk.  :) The End.

Except for this.  I actually parked my car in the garage for the first time in well over one year.  Spookey though to come out in the garage and see a car, very weird indeed.  The aircraft parts on the wall are David's.  At least there's something aviation related in here.