Sinus Progress

Before leaving on Saturday morning, I tried to reach a good stopping point in Sinus construction. Specifically, I tried to get the blue carpeting installed in the cockpit area. I was mostly successful, though the large piece glued to the firewall turned out not to be stuck on very well at all, and a whole side of it came loose.

Well, I'm not sure the contact cement that came with the kit was very good, though more likely I just didn't use it right. Anyway, I bought another spray can of it (I have lots of the brush-on variety). The new cement seems to hold better, though it's much "grabbier" than the other kind

I masked around the rest of the cockpit , then sprayed to reglue the sound deadener. It seems to be working quite well. I also glued down the ends of two side pieces, under which no glue had been painted on initially because then I hadn't known the exact area needing it. I only have two more narrow strips of carpeting to apply--these will go on both sides of the windshield, apparently to reduce solar reflection and glare.

I also Loctited (with Permatex brand) the bolts that hold in the throttle and choke lever assembly, and also the flap handle at the rear center of the cockpit. These were fixed in place with red "threadsetter" which is the permanent kind. I used the blue threadsetter (less permanent) on the threads of the four bolts that mount a container holder on the front of the firewall. I'm trying to finish up things in the cockpit before moving on to other systems.

Though the landing gear is mounted, I have yet to torque the outer wheel mounting nuts. I won't be able to access these with an ordinary torque wrench, so I'm on the lookout for a simple spring scale (such as what I guess some folks use to weigh fish they've just caught) so I can pass a bar through the bolt (a hollow thing with two holes drilled laterally). Then, by pulling on the bar a certain distance out, using the spring scale, I should be able to calculate foot-pounds of torque, for conversion to Newton-meters.

Hallelujah! I was missing one of the washers used to mount the landing gear to the fuselage. And I found it! It was right there, in the little plastic bag that this hardware had come it, so this wasn't like solving a major mystery. But I'm glad to have it in place under the nut now.

Rather soon, I'll have to be figuring out flight control systems and fuel lines, so I can get those installed. I'd love to fly this motorglider by the end of summer, but this will require steady work and not hitting any snags. We'll see how this goes.

There will be photos of all this.