4 hours.
You know by now that fiberglass is not my favorite medium in which to create airborne works of art. Mostly it’s the mess, but the big minus is the cure time. I filled the ends of the empennage tips with foam, laid up some fiberglass on each side to stiffen it, then slathered on a nice frosting of micro. I had to take another run at the micro to fill the low spots, but this time I mixed it a little wet. Of course, this necessitates putting the pieces in a position that will allow the filler to flow out flat along the backside, like so:
This tree, cobbled together with clamps, tongue depressors, and scrap angle, allowed the filler to behave as if it was cast in a mold. There’s still a modicum of shaping after this, but these are nearly done.
But I had to do something else while this was curing, so I tackled the thing I know I have the resources for. A while back, I verified that the strobe unit worked. Now it was time to stick it in the plane. I’m going to worry about wire runs later, but I mounted it just behind the baggage comparment bulkhead on the passenger’s side. This is a fairly common location, and will do the job nicely. But I’m out of practice with metal. I went through three plates before I got one that fit right. There are two pieces of angle a little wider than the strobe head, fixed to the J-stringers between the longeron and the floor. Drilling them to the J-stringers was not fun, and neither was riveting them. But they did eventually go in. Here’s a shot of one of the angles clecoed in:
And this with everything assembled and riveted:
