Fresh air NACA, micro/BID on exposed foam | 10.17.2020 - 10.25.2020

Sanded around the interior of the fresh air NACA cutout for eventual interior glassing. The issue here was that I couldn't sand all of the paint off without starting to cut into actual glass. I did the best I could to balance removing paint and removing glass. Thankfully this isn't structural or anything, and the paint is *really* bonded on there, so a little under the glass shouldn't be a big deal.

Paint removed as best as I could.

I also filed the micro on the 45 degree edge on both scoops nice and flat:

Fresh air scoop

Oil cooler scoop

Since I was going to be making some micro to install the fresh air scoop, I also removed foam wherever I could find it exposed to fill. This helps seal things up so there's no exposed foam on the outside of the plane.

All of these now empty voids were filled with micro.

 

After that, the fresh air scoop was installed with a healthy amount of micro. This is just to hold it in place and fill some voids on the back side, rather than tacking it in place with hot glue for glassing. At this point, the scoop sits proud of the surface, but I'll hit it with a dremel later to make it flush.

Stir sticks holding it to the edges.

Inside

On the 18th, I cut 2 plies BID for the fresh air scoop and glassed it to the inside skin after filling the voids. This is some ugly glass because of the paint... but it'll be okay.

Peel-ply to help hold the bottom of the layup up during cure.

 

On the 19th, I cut a bunch of little strips of BID to apply over the areas that I had filled with micro earlier, as well as BID for the strake pockets and the outside of the fresh air scoop.

These ones are for the strake end.

Applied with resin. The excess will be trimmed off later.

Final ply that goes over the entire outside of the strake pockets to tie everything together.

Scoop trimmed with BID applied from the inside of the scoop to the outer fuselage skin.

The fresh air scoop will get trimmed and then sanded and filled with micro to fair it in. 

For a few days, worked on engine procurement, avionics layout, etc. Stuff that doesn't translate to pictures, but consumes a ton of time. ;)

On the 25th, I came back around and trimmed all the excess BID off the areas that I had glassed. Here's some of the end results:

Pocket trimmed and sanded, also the thin BID above on the strake end.

COVID hair-do, also the fresh air scoop cut and sanded

Oil cooler scoop 45 degree cut.

That's all for now.

- Jeff