Another day at the office

So the cargo bay turned out ok after all. Some work on the sides was done and then carpeted. The pics are terrible and I will try to replace them tomorrow. It was a very dark stormy day today so the flash went a bit overboard..

I bought a very lightweight and thin carpet from a local retailer and used spray glue to stick it down to the metal. It was a little bumpy around the corners and so on but not too bad. The carpet was dirt cheap so if I decide to change the bay I will not be too much out of pocket. I still have heaps of carpet just in case.

I fully expect, by the way I have run the fuel lines for the AeroCarb, that I will have the best Burping Sonex of all time. I had great plans to make the fuel lines straight, pointing uphill and well shielded. In hindsight I should have mounted the Gascolator in the usual location and I could have come close to achieving this goal. However I out smarted myself and thought that if I fitted it on the other side of the engine bay it would be well away from the exhaust and greatest heat source. I will probably keep the fuel lines like this at the moment and see if I can get it running in the near future. It will be just fine on the ground. I will have a look again at other options and fuel fittings to see if I can create a better and more direct route. The main issue is the fuel flow meter and incorporating it into the line. On a positive, the mixture cable and throttle cable fit excellently and work well. 

I will have to add a few more photos to this post tomorrow as today I also finalised and fitted the  brake lever and added the rubber grommets for the brake lines that go through the fire wall. I had to re bleed the brakes also.  I have had the brake and flap lever on and off the plane a few times in the last two days so that I could get the optimum bend on the handles and so on, so that they will not interfere with each other in operation. The way it is set up as well, will allow the brake to be set into the park position while the flaps are also in the off position. I'm not sure if I just got lucky with the configuration or Sonex have made the detent bigger to allow this option. Either way it worked out well. 

The canopy strap was also another little mission I carried out today. I was lucky enough to have some left over cable and swages from my old project and made the cable up. I had no AN525-10R10's in my bolt kit (again) so used the standard AN3 bolts to temporarily attach the cable and check for lengths.  In regard to the canopy today I also bought from bunnings :)  a 3" handle that just happened to fit perfectly for the inside of the canopy open slide. The threads, as an added bonus, also were an Imperial thread 8/32 and the correct counter sunk screws went straight in. It also looks good too. The canopy latch spring I also fitted to the canopy. This spring exerts force on the latch assy to keep the canopy normally closed.  A R-clip is also fitted to positively pin lock the canopy closed for flight operations. This was an easy fit today, by just drilling the hole in the correct spot with the canopy secured and closed. The clip will hang from the handle by a wire so that it will be obvious if it is not fitted during the run up checks before flight.