Author: bruce

Last weekend, the Shadow microlight project took a big step forward towards completion. That occurred when the fibreglass nose cone was glued onto the honeycomb fuselage tub.

Then began the long job of mixing lightweight fairing powder with 2-pot epoxy and carefully filling every hole, crevice and hollow. Once the epoxy has set, I spray on a faint guide coat of colour paint, followed by even more hours of sanding down the filler. The coloured guide coat shows up any imperfections in the surface, so the process needs to be repeated until you’re happy with the smoothness. Since the aircraft is old, I stopped well short of perfection – it will look OK from a distance..

Today I masked up the fuselage, then sprayed an adhesion coat onto the fibreglass nosecone, kevlar side panels and thin plywood canopy shroud. Hopefully that will help the water-based paint to stick well.

A few weeks ago, the new Rotax 582 ‘Blue-top’ engine arrived. It is fitted with oil injection and a by-pass cooling system. This system is an improvement over the 582 ‘Silver-top’ model because it keeps the coolant circulating within the engine block, while the engine is warming up. When the thermostat does open, it diverts hot water to the radiators and closes off the by-pass.

 

Wiring up electrical systems gives me the ‘heebie jeebies’ – I’m never very sure whether the sneaky little electrons will go where I want them to go or if the wires will suffer a melt-down (thereby letting ‘the smoke get out’ of them).
I’d already spent hours on the computer working on wiring diagrams – colour-coded wires, switch banks, earth buses, filtered avionic supply, etc. That’s all very nice, but eventually someone has to cut
actual wires and crimp on actual connectors. I’ve sat at the nose of the Shadow for quite a few hours tentatively cutting, labelling and crimping. After the first session, I’d done five wires, and only made two mistakes! One was too short. Another had the wrong label.

 

The final result is OK I think, but needs a better way to support the bundle of wires.

Now completed the covering of the wing’s centre section.
With the help of my brother-in-law and his wife, we flipped the fuselage/wing centre upside down (and carried it back into the workshop) so I could work on the underside of the wing stub. It was very easy to cover it with lightweight Poly-Fiber fabric and then gently heat shrink it smooth. I was pretty pleased with the zipped access panels that I’d sewn in before gluing the fabric on.
The brushed-on sealing coat was Wattyl “Solagard Gloss” water-based roof paint (with Floetrol conditioner) thinned with BarsBugs. This flows across and through the weave, gripping the polyester fibres much better than conventional fabric sealers. Next were several sprayed coats of Solagard Gloss/Floetrol thinned with water.
My brother and I carried the inverted fuselage/wing centre out of the workshop and flipped it back onto its wheels. Then, I could cover the top surface of the wing’s centre section. It took some ingenuity to sew and glue fabric shelves along each side of the tail boom, so that I could eliminate the foam shapes that normally surround the boom as it exits the centre section.

I also fitted the underwing luggage locker. It’s a hinged divinycell tub, which can hold a sleeping bag and small tent. In the open position it give easy access for connecting the port-side aileron pushrod. When its closed the luggage is prevented from fouling the pushrod.  The starboard-side aileron pushrod is accessed thru the zips mentioned above. There is a 28 litre fuel tank above and aft of the pushrod, which more than doubles the Shadow’s range.

Today I wheeled the Shadow out of the workshop and took some photos to show progress on my re-build. It’s looking like an aircraft again.

It’s been a satisfying couple of days. Yesterday I’d attached the wing centre section and tail boom to the fuselage. Obviously the undercarriage had been mounted underneath to hold it off the ground.

Over the past week I’ve been able to tick off a whole bunch of tasks from my list, including assembling the polyurethane flexi-rod tail skid, mounting the fuel transfer valve with its on/off control rod, crimping the limit wires for the rudder pedals, nose-leg suspension and flap lever. In addition, I have sprayed the instrument panel black, made the polycarbonate side windows and finished sanding the  leading edge of the wing centre section.

Very pleasing to see this amount of progress in a week.