Despite the lack of updates, there’s good progress on the airplane over the last couple of weeks. In mid-May, the airplane went over to AirTec for the annual inspection.  Nothing major was found, but there were a couple of smaller issues that I need to sort out before she flies again.

Before the annual inspection, I had to finish the flaps and ailerons.  When I last posted, I had finished taping the surfaces and it was time to paint.  There’s 8 coats of paint on the fabric: 3 coats of PolyBrush (the pink stuff, which is basically liquid vinyl), 3 coats of PolySpray (aluminum in suspension, provides a UV protection), and 2 coats of PolyTone (the color coat).  All the coats are sprayed on, which is a bit of fun, as it requires an air compressor, an HVLP spray gun, and some type of paint booth.

When I started the project, I had a 30 Gallon oiled air compressor, which is good, but just barely able to keep up with a small HVLP gun.  A neighbor was moving and gave me a great deal on his 80 gallon compressor, which can sustain much higher air output.  It’s also huge and requires a hard wired 15A/220V connection.

I forgot to take pictures of the PolyBrush and PolyTone coats, but here’s the control surfaces after the first coat of PolySpray is applied:

The spray booth is 8’x8’x20′ and will be used to spray Jeff’s KitFox now that I’m done, so all the work of setting it up won’t go to waste.  You can see that the first coat is still a little thin, but that’s why there’s two more coats after.  By the time it’s done, there’s a solid UV block without much weight.

After replacing all the bushings in the control surfaces and their mounting points, they were reinstalled during the annual.  It was a bit tricky to get the ailerons on; the new bushings made everything really tight.  But they’re all on and there’s a lot less play in the controls now.  I’m pretty happy with how things turned out.  But I’m also not looking forward to recovering the rest of the airplane :).