But that’s not all. Two weeks ago I took out the entire instrument panel and delivered it to AV8 Paintworks at Marion to have it covered in black carbon fiber. This is due to the fact that i originally painted it with flat black out of a spray can. The paint is flaking badly, so I wanted to do something about it. Since the plane is down for annual (a subject I’ll get back to eventually) I thought it was a good idea to get it done while doing the annual.
November was a crappy month to do anything on the plane. I had to travel for business and still keep up my full schedule. Other than getting the panel out and up to Marion, I really didn’t get much done. Because I’m (tentatively) scheduled to get the plane painted this month (December) I’m pretty agitated about needed to finish the annual and finish the wheel fairings so they can all be painted at the same time. Unfortunately, when I have multiple conflicting goals—and I don’t feel comfortable with either of them—I have a tendency to fall into the “paralysis by analysis” mode. That was pretty much all of November.
The day before yesterday, I got to the hangar and made a deliberate decision to get something done. I chose the wheel fairings. About 5 hours of cutting and tweaking, I think that I'm over the most difficult part (putting epoxy&flox inside, where I can’t get to it.)
Remember how much I sweated getting those holes lined up? I even went to the trouble of back-light drilling. For reasons I can’t explain, but am no longer surprised by, those holes don’t line up when I actually put the fairings on the wheels. I spent an entertaining hour trying to figure out how to get a light source inside the fairing that had a complete wheel in there. I ended up taping my phone (with the light turned on) to the tire and attaching the fairing and drilling again. Since the next step is to use flox/epoxy to build up the inside, I realized that the mixture will fill the slightly offset hole that was laboriously created a few weeks ago.
Anyway, I’m going to finish up the wheel fairings, then continue the annual inspection. It’s not logical, but it works for me.
Left Main Wheel Fairing Aft
Right Main Wheel Fairing
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