As well as adding some supporting 1/22 balsa cheeks in the upper cabane late last night, I started to prepare the backing / packing for the wing root ply landing plates. These will allow the material covering to form around these parts and have a good base to secure to.

I held off gluing in place as I could see that the alloy shroud on the main spar wing peg mount may well catch on this. So have made and tailored the parts in situ, drilling the holes to allow the joint bolt heads to poke through and then used masking tape to hold pending some decent weather to allow me to get the ‘plane outside and the wings out to check clearance.

Note the paint brushes I am keeping out now as I pass each part and start the big clear down of debris and swarf and dust ….

Having now got the cowls as I want them I can secure the front end of the stringers inside the cheek cowls. I had been trying to work out how to get the drill into this tight space and even got a right anlge short chuck driver to help. In the end it was far simpler to simply remove the front 3 dowel pins from the stringers, carefully spring them out and drill the premarked location for the angled brackets I had made.

These had also been pre drilled for the rivet that would go through the cheek.

Simple job in the end. Its funny how some jobs make it feel so much closer to finish … riveting little bits like this are one of those !

With the top and bottom cowl largely in place and just some fine trimming around the edges its time to remove the clecos that have been securing the stainless firewall to the top decking and side cheeks

Note washers are used where the alloy 3.2mm rivets pull against the fibreglass top decking.

As part of the final gaggle of tasks .. one is to weigh the aircraft and then start applying the formula that my Dad kindly etched out to review the expected balance point and, therefore, the subsequent ballast required.

Although this is a little premature (not all objects are on the aircrat yet – although its largely very near all up weight) its worth walking through the process.

So it looks like 25kg on the tailwheel and 85kg on each of the mains .. so all up currently is 195kg.

Got the throttle extender arm delivered yesterday (a snip at just over £48 !) ouch …. but as I hope to be using it on a regular basis ! certainly worth having .. will fit it this weekend to complete that part of the engine connect.

Also ordered a full service set (ready for the first service) all bits on it are unused at the moment… so now have 2 rotor arms, 2 distributor caps, 8 spark plugs and a new inline fuel filter.

New steel braided fuel tubing with slightly larger internal bore on order so hope that arrives by the weekend.

After some very supportive work by Mike to get the steel handles into the allow wing tubes, I cut them to size and re fitted the wing pins and then fitted back into each wing.

Workd on the fitting of the oil cooler intake in readiness for getting this set ahead of any planned engine run.

The aim, I believe, is to get it stuck well and truly into the airflow and get a funnel effect going so that it has a form of ram air cooling.

This fitting will let me mount the cooler upright .. put the oil pipes down vertically into the top (so you dont get air locks) and still keep it reasonably accessible

Update 20 Feb –

Now etched and brackets trimmed a little. This will be bolted on vs riveted on in case I need to remove the entire arrangement.