Final Reassembly

The clear coat is done and I am officially done with the painting process. Now I have to put everything back together. Counting the fasteners, there are several hundred pieces. The good news is that this will hopefully be the very last time.

Before I can reinstall the control surfaces, they have to be mass balanced again. The painted surface is almost all behind the center of balance, so the balance point shifts aft after paint. The fix is to hang them by the hinges, add some weights  where they won't show and glass over them.

In the above pictures you can see the fun I had until 10:00 on Wednesday night. The paint shop owner, Lou, was kind enough to let me come in after work and lock up on my way out.

I used safety wire to suspend the ailerons from the painting scaffold. I then added strips of stick on wheel weights from the auto tire center to make the lower surface balance level.

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Here I am balancing the elevators. You hang them upside down and the bottom (now on top) should be level. I took some extra triangular lead weights, used a hack saw to keep slicing portions off and added them to the outboard side of the center of the torque tube bolted right to the existing weight. Nice and level.

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Here is a shot of the additional weight on the torque tube to balance the elevator.

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This is a shot of the stick on weights added to the leading edge of the aileron on the inboard side. They get covered with a single ply of bid then painted white.

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I got the canard back on. This is all but impossible by yourself. Luckily,  Smoketown airport always has some other builders around on the weekends and two Rotorway guys, Glen and John, helped me lift it into place. Then there were a load of electronics, servos, connections and controls to hook up.

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It just looks FAST in the new paint. You'll notice I got the gear doors, hub caps and upper cowling on .


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Nose gear doors and canard cover on. There are maybe 24 washers in the gear door mounts and the nose was parked over a drainage grate in the paint shop with no room to move it. Thank goodness for my trusty magnetic pick up.

A great builders tip for putting washers in tight spaces - fold a piece of masking tape in half so that the ends just catch the washer. It gives you a handle to slide the washer into place, then pulls off.

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It's almost 6:00 on Saturday evening. I forgot my watch, but notice the sun going down through the window. As usual, this is taking about double the time I'd estimated. My wife refers to this as "airport time".

I still have to mount the ailerons, reinstall the seats, silicone the sparrow strainer and various covers in place  and do some general clean up. I'll come back tomorrow night to finish up.

The plan is then to take off work on Monday so that I can do an oil change, weight and balance, then get back in the air.

In flight shots of the completed and painted plane should be up by Monday night. Wish me luck!

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