I received a delivery from Vans today with some of the bits I need to make progress firewall forward but first job today was to carefully cut out the fabric round the hinges in the elevators, flaps, and ailerons with a soldering iron to free the hinges. Once this was done, strips of 0.040" aluminium were cut and match drilled to the firewall to provide the mounting for the cowl. Spacers were also cut and match drilled to fit between the cowl mounting strips and the inside lip of the firewall. The idea is that the thickness of the aluminium skin plus the spacer plus the firewall should be equal to the thickness of the cowl so that when it is fastened to the mounting strip it lies flush with the fuselage side. Then the upper cowl was positioned and match drilled to the mounting strip at 4" spacing. This will be fastened in place using Dzus fasteners to make it easy to remove.The lower cowl has to be cut out for the airscoop that feeds air into the filtered airbox so the basic construction of the airbox was started to allow the requisite measurements to be established. I need to construct the carburettor heat control and then I can rivet it together. The airbox kit is from Vans and is identical to the one I'm using on the RV9A.
