We have a stomach bug going around the house. It started with Cody, then progressed to The Princess, and then today it hit Spork who was down for the count for the day, never getting out of bed or very far away from a throw up container. Poor guy.
The weather was epic so we enjoyed a cool day in the shop with a nice breeze provided by the fans. The fabric was already on, but the tapes needed to be done. But before that, the tail wheel shock needed to be finished, which meant fitting the access panel we made to the shock dimensions. Cody knocked that out in no time and we moved onto taping.
As we progress to each portion of the build, I always worry what the next part will be like. Will taping be really hard? What about hanging the engine? What if I mess that up? Or the wiring for the avionics? What if I let the smoke out and ruin the avionics. There is always a little trepidation at each new step that I will come up short on knowledge or talent. Taping was, oddly, one that I was worried about. But with Cody’s help, we got started and found that it was, as promised, decidedly easy. It is tedious, but really it is just an arts and craft project. Lay out some lines, spread some glue, lay out the tape, spread some thinner glue, move on to the next part. It is actually quite enjoyable and begins to make the wing look like an airplane wing.
Of course, the next step is inspection rings. And I’m already worried about them. Even though I’ve already done one once before at an EAA workshop. It has been several years. Plus, what if I put them in the wrong place?!
We’ll get there, and get it done somehow.
Wednesday is our next work day. Hopefully we’ll have everyone healthy and be able to work. We need to flip the wing and tape the other side. Then we’ll tape the edges and the wing will be covered! Then we’ll use the uncovered wing to locate where our inspection holes should be and cut in the holes (scary!) Once the inspection holes are in, we’ll move this wing to another shop bay and start on the next wing. Hopefully we can get this wing done in a much shorter time frame since we now have some experience. I’d like to at least get it wrapped by Friday if possible, maybe even a tape or two in place.
Once the second wing is done, which will probably take about a week, we can move onto covering the fuselage. We are doing that last because I am waiting on avionics to show up and I need to install autopilot servos before covering. There is no provision for an autopilot in the SuperSTOL build so we’ll have to make it up as we go. Should be interesting.