Fuselage covering work

Installed ten protective fabric doilies on the tail at various locations such as the attachment points for the flying wires and the horizontal stabilizer.

One of the tail doilies installed

Also installed protective doilies around the nose wheel bracket attach points, plus a few alternate main gear attach points that would be used if the plane is ever converted to a tail-wheel.  Also installed a grommet and doily for the header tank drain opening in the bottom of the fuselage.

Two doiles at nose wheel bracket attach points

We spent a bit of time determining exactly where to place the gascolator, as we want to ensure it's placed at the lowest point along the fuel run, and want to keep the fuel-line routing as clean as possible.  The location we chose is beneath the passenger seats.  A grommet and doily were installed in the fabric at the location where the gascolator drain will protrude out the bottom of the fuselage.

Gascolator installed, with hole in fuselage beneath it

Ten additional tiny patches/doilies were also placed on the fabric at the landing gear attach brackets locations (inside surface of fabric).  These were mainly placed there to plug up some small air gaps that still existed around those brackets.

Small patches added at gear attach points to prevent air filtration

We installed plastic fairings and doilies at the points where the rudder cables exit the fuselage.  Although we spent a lot of time lining these up to get it right the first time, we didn't.  We tested it out by installing the rudder and cables (temporarily), and then watched the cables on both sides as the rudder was moved to the left and right.  The cables and fairings worked great for "most" of the rudder travel, but we had a problem at the full left and right positions because the cables were rubbing the fairings slightly.   We didn't want any interference, so decided to remove the fairings and do it over again.  Before we removed the fairings, we installed patches on the inside over those locations just to ensure that the fabric would not stretch and mess up the fabric on the right or left sides.  We then removed the fairings, cleaned up the glue, and reinstalled the plastic fairings.   Still need to add doilies over these.   Hours: 15

Rudder cable fairing installed