I just realized that I don’t have any pictures of my completed Velocity posted here. Here’s a few I took before I moved hangars. This was shortly before first flight.
Data plate
More busy work. For the data plate, I cut a piece of 316 stainless steel into an appropriately sized rectangle. I created a design in CorelDraw and sprayed a laserable paint on it and used a CO2 laser engraver to lase in the dark lettering. This laserable paint is pretty cool, wherever the laser hits, […]
Vortilons
Doing busy work while I’m waiting for my engine parts to return. Vortilons took a bit longer than I thought, but they came out nice. I followed the manual – I cut out the vortilons using the templates from the supplied fiberglass panel. On the main wing, I laid two layers of BID where the […]
Weight and Balance
After hearing about a couple rather corpulent Velocities, I was actually dreading putting my project up on the scales. I asked my local EAA chapter if we had scales – they said absolutely, come pick them up. My EAA chapter hangar is about a 1.5hr drive away, so I was considering just flying there with a […]
Wings back on
I’ve been getting comfortable in the hangar now and getting setup. Been doing a lot of smaller jobs like mounting the doors, putting trim around the interior of the doors, wiring the door closed sensors, polishing the windows (i.e. getting all the scratches out after years of construction abuse). Time to put the main wings […]
Painting the plane
First off, wow, what a massive amount of work to paint the plane. I thought filling, sanding, priming (repeat) was a lot of work – painting was about the same amount of work, but condensed into some long days – pretty intense. Anyway, I decided to have a local painter paint the plane for me. […]
Back in the shop for the winter
The plane is essentially ready for paint, and I had wanted to get it painted this fall, but it just wasn’t going to happen. The weather was starting to get cool here and the guy I was going to have paint it was busy and couldn’t guarantee a date. So, I decided to move the […]
Just about ready for paint
The exhausting, seemingly never-ending job of sanding is just about over. The entire plane is in primer and ready for a final sanding before paint. The doors are already well aligned, and I’ve had the canard on before, but I’ve never had the wings or cowlings on. So before I send it off for paint, […]
Engine cowling prep for paint
The curvy bits are what take all the time. The little bumps on the lower engine cowling added some time fiddling with the little curved edges. Also, I removed/filled two large bumps the previous builder had put in the top cowling – that took some extra time as well. They’re about ready for paint now, […]
More sanding…
Yeah, I’m tired of sanding, filling pin holes, priming, seeing more pin holes, filling pin holes, sanding, priming (repeat four times…). I can see a light at the end of the tunnel, though! The fuselage is finished, the canard is finished (along with the elevators), dog house done, and those nasty, lots of curves doors […]