Almost Air Show Ready

The glass work is done on the gear door and lower cowl repairs. Today, I stopped out to do the filler work and get them ready for paint. Here is the cowl repair all cured with the peel ply ready to be taken off.

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Here is the finished repair after knife trimming the new glass, sanding, filling, back drilling and countersinking the hole. You can see how just one section of new glass was added, then blended in seamlessly. It is as good as it looks and will be an invisible repair once I match paint it with the air brush tomorrow.

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Here is the final coat of filler before finish sanding. I forgot to get a picture of the final product, but it looks great and ready for paint.

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While I was at it, I fixed some damage to a door sill and exterior paint. I had given a friend a ride. He closed the door latch handle,which extended the locking pins, then closed the door. This gouged a big gash in the exterior blue paint and in the sill. In this picture, you can see the small blob of filler I am using to repair it. The trick here is not to cause even more damage in the repair process.

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I made two sanding sticks from craft sticks and adhesive backed sand paper. The goal is to sand the filler flush without touching the surrounding paint.

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Filled, sanded, match painted with blue and white. An invisible repair that is as good as new. Tomorrow, I can go out and air brush the cowl and gear door repairs. Thursday, I can reassemble and fly. It will be all ready to display at the air show on Saturday.

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Last but not least, I finally found a way to put my poster collection on the walls to decorate the hangar. Harbor Freight sells tiny rare earth magnets that stick like crazy. I bought out all of their supply and hung everything up as easy as you please. It really brightened up the hangar/man cave.

More pictures to come after the air show.
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