FAA update (04/17/2020)

What a surprise during the pandemic/shutdown to receive this!   I entered it as a "Cozy IV", but appears most registered theirs as "Cozy MK IV" or "Cozy Mark IV".   Currently the FAA registry shows 52 unique models with "Cozy" in the model name and a total of 266 Cozy III's and IV's.  Whatever they're called...

Chapter 25 lower carbon fiber cowl pinholes

The last time I was shooting primer, I had extra left over so grabbed the bottom carbon fiber cowl that had been sanded, but not filled or epoxy wiped and shot it with a couple of coats of Southern Polyurethane Epoxy Primer.  I wanted to see what the results would be without doing an epoxy wipe first.   Despite having a heavy coat, it still had these little pinholes.   I sanded it down and did a couple epoxy wipe/sand (180 grit) iterations.  It's been to cold to paint for now, but looking like it will be great weather next week.

Chapter 25 Finishing - Wing dolly

A couple of moving dollies, one large and one small were components of a dolly to prepare for painting and final sanding of the wings.  Propping a couple of 1x2 with the ends trimmed, into the wing bolt holes helps steady the wing.   Some dense cardboard protects the winglet tip.   The outboard end will be raised up higher when painting.  I added another brace from the large dolly to the long 2x4.   The large dolly has a 2'x2' piece of plywood.  The smaller dolly has a piece trimmed to match the slope of the rudder cavity.  

This dolly is fine to roll around on smooth surface when the wind isn't blowing.   If moving over rough surface and the wind is blowing, it could get tipped.   Might need some out riggers and straps if it is being moved on a rough surface.   The long 1x2's can be pulled during painting.

Canard NAV antenna alternative

My canard (built by the previous builder) didn't have the copper foil tapes for the glide slope or NAV antennas but I need them.   I looked at a variety of commercially available antennas but their form factor wasn't the best for installing in the cavity above the canard.   I made a prototype using 16 gauge wire, two elements 23" long and a MABA-011094 balun transformer.   The wire has a couple of inches in the center that connect to the balun with very small wire, then there's four turns around a 1" PVC pipe, then a few inches extend outward. It seems to work pretty well (can pick up FTW and AFW ATIS from T67) without fine tuning yet.   At 23" for each element, should be more sensitive to the lower VHF band.  I'm going to try to make a smaller, lighter one and verify the resonant frequency of the antenna and tune/trim if necessary.

Bleeping Blogger....

Just a quick note/rant that I couldn't find an older post I'd made by just using the Chapter label/filters.   Then noticed there was a "show older posts" link near the bottom of the page.

Otherwise using the text search at the top left of the page works.