December 16, 2011 by dsmith3689

Chapter 8 finished!

A couple weeks ago I finished Chapter 8 and immediately started Chapter 9. I did this before taking a proper set of pictures of the Chapter 8 work, but will do so when the plane is suitable for flipping back onto its side.

Chapter 8 was, again, very much by the plans. My biggest deviation was a very common one, where I put the nut plates into the shoulder rests before attaching it to the fuselage. This way I don’t have to cut the slits in the face of the shoulder rests.

I also punted on making the head rests. I’m planning to do a forward-hinged canopy, so I’ll attach both of those to the canopy frame. I’m also considering some off-the-shelf head rests rather than building the ugly triangle thing in the plans. But I’ll deal with that when it’s time to build the canopy.

Pics to come…

Shoulder Rest Installed

Here’s the shoulder rest after installation and glassing. I stuck largely with the plans, and put the 3 ply UNI layup over hte seatbelt attach points. I peel-plyed the entire thing in one big piece, and it came out super smooth and nice. Can’t want to sit in it to try it out!

In the back you can see my Vance Atkinson sight gauge installed. I put this in during Chapter 7. I deviated from the provided instructions somewhat. I never really liked how the sight gauge sorta sticks out away from the side of the fuselage when installed per the instructions. Just never looked clean to me. So I decided I’d mount mine mostly flush with the interior side. To do this, before glassing the exterior, I cut away enough foam from to attach the sight gauge to the back side of the interior glass. I also cut a hole in the interior glass for the sight gauge “bubble” to poke through. I then liberally floxed the sight gauge to the outside of the interior glass. When glassing the exterior I simply poked the metal tubes through the UNI, being careful not to plug them with excess epoxy.

I’m really pleased with the result. The sight gauges poke out just enough that you can see them from the front seat, but have a nice, flush look to them. I plan to leather the sides of the interior, and will be able to carry the leather all the way to the edge of the bubble.

Shoulder rest interior

And here’s the interior of the shoulder rest. I went ahead and peel ply-ed the whole thing. Why not.

Shoulder rest core

Here’s my shoulder rest, getting put together with 5-min epoxy. The next step is to glass the interior of it with 1 BID, and leave about an inch of dry glass hanging over the side. This gives you something to wet out when you move it to the plane.