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BOB'S WEB SITE
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Date: 8-13-2020
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Number of Hours: 5.00
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Manual Reference: Section 37
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Brief Description: Finished aft trimming of bottom cowling
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I've been out of action for the last 10 days or so, my health issues have not been kind and I didn't really feel that great today but needed to go to the hangar just to relax if nothing else. Jim Pedersen, my hangar neighbor, stopped over to inform me that he could tell by my color that I wasn't feeling well.
So armed with that morale booster, I plunged ahead, continuing to slowly trim the aft portion of the bottom cowling to try to get it to mate up with the top fitting. I deal in 1/32's of an inch at a time so it's lot of putting on and taking off.
If you look at my last post, you'll see a pretty big gap between the top and bottom at the rearest most portion. I had calculated -- guessed, really -- that as I trimmed and sanded the bottom corner and then the sides, that gap would close. I was right.
Van's sort of hints at this in the instructions but does not completely say it. So if you're not careful, you'll draw a line all along the rear side of the bottom cowling, slice it off, sand it to the line, fit it to the cowling, and be horrified by the big honking gaps you've got. You just can't do it that way; something I learned on the first airplane I built, when I ended up producing The Cowling Chronicles on YouTube, which, I'm happy to say, I still get comments on.
But the instructions have really improved in the last 10 or so years. Still, a few pieces of advice are necessary.
Getting the very bottom corner and underside flush is the most important thing and when you originally do it, you'll have a big gap there and you just have to ignore it. once the bottom and bottom corner fits flush to the skin, you can draw an initial reference line, using the masking/painters tape at 22/32ds. But you don't want to sand to that line yet because something else is going to happen: As you sand closer and closer to that line (again, assuming you've got the bottom sitting perfectly flush), that reference line is actually going to move farther away.
There's no getting around it it. You have to take the cowling
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