Well, good news and bad news. The good news is that things are still progressing well. The above is a sight I have waited years for- my Velocity in its hangar. I get a thrill every time I see this sight. People come wandering over every time I have the door up to see it.
The bad news is that I won't be able to fly it into Oshkosh this year. The wings, cowling and canard are in primer. The fuselage will be primed shortly and the plane will be ready for paint. The interior and instruments are done and I am about ready for engine start. I am so close to flying it is killing me.
However, I still have a lot of details to finish that will take a few more months. There is a long punch list of minor, yet time consuming items like seatbelts, instrument calibration, fine tuning the retract mechanism and the like. I've started the paperwork and contacted my DAR.
I am going to have a test pilot do the first flight. All of the above are Very Expensive as well.
I am actually surprised that I am not totally frustrated. It turns out that I am enjoying the process and not that worried about an artificial deadline I set for myself. I do want to finish in the next few months so that I can start paying my wife and family back for their support during these years of building. A few trips to Disney and the Bahamas will help a lot.
The following are some examples of the things I'm continuing to work on.
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I finished all of the nutplates for the cowling and get to see it for the first time without all the clecos.
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Here's a real lesson in pacing. Nutplating the cowl involves drilling and countersinking well over 100 holes with precision. I was bound and determined to get it all done before I left the hangar for the night. I did a great job until I got tired. I drilled the LAST hole right through the oil line. Oh well, at least I know how to install the oil lines now. More "education and recreation" payoff. I didn't even go nuts when I noticed.
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It does look a lot better with the cowling installed and without all of the clecos holding it there. Another "Builder Moment" as I step out onto the taxiway to see how it looks and imagine it in its final paint.
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Here is some more body work that was required after the wings were put on. The copilot side strake doesn't match the wing join line at all. It hangs down about 3/8 inch. I had the exact same situation with this spot on my first plane, so no head scratching was required. Rather than add a ton of filler to the wing, the answer is simply to remove a patch of glass from the offending portion of the strake bottom, recontour it and reglass it so that it matches.
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Here it is with the glass removed and the foam recontoured. It is ready for micro and glass.
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Here is the repair, all glassed and ready for filler. As you may have guessed from the transparent layup, I used West 405 with the fast hardener. This stuff is great in the summer. The repair was hard and ready to sand in 3 hours. Its not for beginners. The working time is very short and if you don't get it out of the cup and onto the glass within moments, it will start to smoke and harden right in the cup. The repair will be invisible once I add a thin layer of filler, and I avoid all that heavy fill I would have needed on the wing.
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