No, not wrapping presents yet. Vinyl wrapping is has been this weeks activity. But first…

Charter Flight

I piloted another charter flight last Thursday. KSDL (Sottsdale) -> KLAX (Los Angeles) -> KLAS (Las Vegas) -> KSGU (St. George, UT) -> KSDL. Long day, great for flying.

Sedona Hike

On Friday, Rob and Hannah Mooi flew up to Sedona with Angelique and I. We had a delightful breakfast and scenic hike. Awesome day.

Hike

Wrapping

The outboard wings are quite long. You can see in the first pic below the one skeet of grey wrap for the underside of the wing. It’s all wrinkly at first, but looks really nice when “glassed” into place.

Loose Wrap

On Monday I was able to get the tops of the right wing and both horizontal tail surfaces. The right side of the design has these simple stripes that I think add a nice bit of character.

Lesson Learned - So… looking the wrapped wing, within 10”, you can see where I applied the micro-balloons. It’s like, everywhere is glassy smooth, then a patch of mud, then more smooth surface. When I had sanded down my patches, the surfaces looked silky smooth with an edgeless transition between the silver aluminum and white micro-paste. Maybe the white color was the problem. Once the vinyl when down, the edge of the patches became obvious and you can even see the grain of my sanding. Every imperfection is pronounced. sigh

Right Side Wrapped

Since the Cherry Max rivets arrived Monday night, I was able to close up the wings on Tuesday. Then I added more micro-paste to the new rivets lines, for consistency. However, I used it sparingly this time. When dry, I applied full force sanding effort even pulling out the power tools… well just my oscillating tool with the sanding attachment. Starting with a course grit, I sanded, then repeated with finner grit paper, then even finer. Dust everywhere! But, this time is was really smooth.

With both wings fully wrapped, the most recent surfaces look much better then the original. But there are still visibile imperfections that I didn’t notice before wrapping. Clearly I need to improves my body work skills.

Wings Wrapped

There was also an attempt to wrap the top of the nose cowling. But I eventually had to throw the whole sheet of vinyl away because it was over-worked, losing it’s adhesive. Those compound curves! After watching some vinyul wrap YouTube videos, I’ll try again by heating the vinyl first and start by stretching it around the curviest part.

Oh, I also ran of our vinyl today and had to order more. Fortunately I have plenty of scraps and smaller surfaces to wrap in the mean time.