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Over the last 4 weeks, I was gone one of those, most of the work has been around fiberglass. I hate and love the stuff. On one hand it's pretty much infinitly repairable but on the other it's alwyas a lot of sanding to get a good fit and finish. So with that, I have the intake system all adjusted for final fit and have start painting them. The two tubes will be painted black on the inside and all three pieces will be the same copper color as the engine. Turns out that there was a TON of exposed weave on these tubes. I don't believe these were meant to be seconds so I'm pretty dissapointed in how much work it is to try and seal and smooth out the inside of these. It is giving me a chance to start practicing with the different materials and paint guns as it's been some time since I painted something. I can say that the current version of UV Smooth Prime as a waterborn product sucks. It takes too long to flash off for how much solids are in it and don't even try if it's a humid day. the stuuf will run if you look at it wrong. It will be interesting to see how it compares with the high build urethane primer I have.

I've also started on the main wheel pants. As is the norm, the fiberglass parts suck and the mounting instructions are impractical if you already have the engine on. Basically they want you to lift it off the gear and level it in all three axis. I just don't have the equipment to do that nor do I want to risk damage given the weight of a near complte aircraft. So I comprimised. Really the idea is to get the fore/aft of the pants as close to possible to level flight. With that in mind I measured how much deflection I have and adjusted the aft of the pants up by that 3/4". Should be close enough.

I also have done most of the finish work on the cowl and will be spraying the inside of the cowl with a white urethane. I sent the heat muffs off to Clint at vetterman to swap with the newer 90 degree offset and, once those are back and mounted, the FWF is 99% complete. Just need to do the fwd baff

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