Stjohn's RV-7

4 hours.
I’m too lazy to post pictures, so I’m just going to lay it out: Installed the roll servo in the wing, after cutting out a section of PVC wire conduit so the bracket and box could clear. Turns out I would have had to do this anyway, since I’d have needed to get the servo control wire out of it at that point, but this will turn out all right.. I have to run up to Kragen for some wire wrap, though.
The big thing today was the foray into painting. I need to get a better, faster measuring system for mixing the paint parts, but I was able to get going with the Stewart Systems Eko Poly. I suck at the paint, let me tell you. I might have to call this ship the Orange Peel Special. I painted the lower section of the baggage bulkhead cover, and even though I got some good practice in on the aft side, the forward side looks like ass. Turns out my paint was too thick and there was probably too much of it going on. The weird thing was, even in the blazing california sun, I couldn’t really tell if my light fog coat was actually going on. Tomorrow, I’ll start cleaning and roughing all the loose parts like vent covers, etc and cleaning out the cockpit for the eventual paint job. On the plus side, that Stewart Systems paint does actually clean up with water, assuming you don’t let it dry on the gun, which is badass. I’d say it’s the least painful option outside of a rattle can there is, and the low toxicity bonus is great too. I still don’t have the hang of reducing paint to the point where it will shoot correctly, but I wanted to go through the process from startup to cleanup and see how long everything takes. The HVLP gun, however, is genius. The flea-market Taiwan special has a 1.7 tip, I needed a 1.5 or a 1.3. Fortunately, there’s an auto body supply shop a few blocks away, and the crew there is nice and knows their biz. I picked up a Sharpe HVLP gravity-feed gun, some containers, a regulator and a gun-side water filter. The gun rocks, It’s me who’s the dumbass. But I’m getting the hang of it, and I should be able to knock out a bunch more parts tomorrow before I have to get shelley from the airport.
Oh, and yesterday, I got started on the subpanel mounting.. there are a lot of non-pre-punched things to do in this section, and I’m getting everything clamped up in preparation for drilling.