Happy New Years

After the layup had cured I pulled of the peel ply and gave them a light sand.

The same was done to the back side.

Next was to level the floor and bring it up to the height of the fuselage floor. I gave the area a light sand to make sure there was no little nibs that would hold up the core.

The core was beveled on the bottom side to match the contour of the nose inner skin. This step would have been easier if I had used pour foam but I chose not to use it for two reasons. The first reason is I hate it. The second reason is I needed a core with a little more strength because of the type of fastener I will be using to hold the rudder pedals down.

When I was happy with the fit I put down a layer of micro and also squeegeed the core with it.

I manually worked out as much of the excess micro as I could. I added some weight to hold it down and left it to cure. The same process was completed on the right hand side.

For this next part I was inspired by the cover that Wade at http://www.longezpush.com/chapter-13-nose-nose-gear/ made for his long-ez. Wade has put a lot of thought and planing into his cover and is utilizing all the space that it has to offer. Me I still have no clue what or where most of the components will be mounting in the nose so I decided to go with the minimalist approach. I started by tracing out the shape of the NG 30s and the boundary of the actuator.

After the shape  of the lower side was traced out I gave the actuator some clearance and decided on the final shape of the upper side.

The core that I am using is 1/8 divinycell. I had some left over from a previous job and decided this would be a good home for it now.

I taped up the cover and did a test fit to make sure I was good to carry on.

I removed one side of the cover so I could vissually check the clearances inside.

The foam is so light that it won’t lay flat on a surface so I decided to vacuum bag the inside layer of glass. I am also laying up a bigger blank just to have some stock of it if I use it more. I may use it to build the battery tray with it.

The cell structure of the foam is quite small so I didn’t bother to micro it. The core was coated with a layer of resin.

A single layer of BID was wet out on the core.

Next is a layer of peel ply. The peel ply goes on dry and is not wet out other than what it absorbs from the  wet out layer of cloth.

Next was a layer of perforated release film. I also put down the sealant tape for the vacuum bag.

The layer of bleeder/breather is fit to the layup. You can see the extra layer in the upper right side, this is for the vacuum port.

The bag was applied and vacuum connected to it. you can see how much resin is already sucking through.