Masking and Priming Fuselage

 We finished masking the entire fuselage, and shot a coat of white primer (2 cross-coats).  Since the temps were in the low 80s, we switched to warm-weather reducer when thinning the primer.  This slows the curing process a little bit to prevent the primer from drying too quickly.  We started on the bottom of the fuselage which was a good thing because we noticed a few runs on this less visible area.  After this, we quickened the pace a bit to prevent runs when shooting the top and sides of the fuselage.

Fuselage with a coat of white primer

After priming, we wet-sanded the base primer coat, which allowed us to smooth it out and also get out the runs that were on the bottom surface.  After sanding, we cleaned all the sanded surfaces with clean water to remove all the sanding debris.  Hours: 11

Fuselage Masking

Continuing on with masking the fuselage.  Definitely tricky in a few areas.  For example, we want to get a layer of paint on both the inside and outside of the door frame tubing.. which means we couldn't just close off the entire cockpit interior, so we are selectively masking so that we can spray all those tricky areas, too.  But we are continuing to make good progress.  Hours: 2.5

Ed masking around a door frame

Fuselage prep for paint

 We cleaned the fuselage fabric with isopropyl alcohol, and then used acetone to clean up excessive glue spots from many of the fuselage tapes.  We also found several residual wrinkles and bubbles in the tapes that we fixed with a hot iron set at about 250 degrees.  Next we started masking the fuselage, which is actually a bit complicated because of all the tubing that gets in the way.  Still have a lot more masking to do, but making good progress. Hours: 10

Masking underway

Masking a window and baggage door

Engine arrives

 We took a brief hiatus from priming/painting for a few weeks due to vacation and other priorities, but one thing that we did do was order the engine from Lockwood Aviation.  The engine we are going with is the Rotax 912is, which puts out 100HP and is fuel injected.  We also ordered a few accessories after some consultation with Just Aircraft, such as the radiator, the larger oil cooler, the ring mount, and stainless exhaust.  Most parts were in stock, except for a few installation bolts and the ring mount.  

We received the engine crate less than a week after they received payment, which was impressive.  There was one minor hiccup (which Lockwood thankfully informed us about shortly after it was shipped), as the crate was missing the fuel pump assembly, and the oil tank had metric threads.  They shipped out the fuel pumps and the oil pump with standard threads right away, and we returned the other oil tank (they covered shipping).  Hours: 2.0

Opening up the crate

Spiffy new 912is