Sanding
I did pretty much a full weekend of sanding on the wheel pants and gear leg fairings. I think they are just about ready for a good “final” coat of primer.
Tanya came out one day and removed the seat pans (bunch of screws), helped install nutplates for the upper intersection fairings, and cleaned up most of the oil mess from the removal of the prop governor. I used this opportunity to carefully inspect all of the control hardware and replace the elevator trim relay. The community has come to understand that the original RAC trim relay has a very high failure rate. I decided not to wait for the failure, but to go ahead and replace the relay with their new unit.
I have an ACS order arriving today that includes another Comant com antenna and the proper hardware to “stake” the nose wheel bushings. I have decided to abandon the Archer wing tip com antenna and install another whip antenna on the bottom of the fuselage in the area of the left gear weldament. This is for my com2 SL-40 radio. I just wasn’t really happy with the marginal reception of the internal tip antenna. I found myself all too often tuning ATIS or AWOS in on com2, only to try again on com1 because of reception distance or aircraft structure shielding.
Also, while I have things taken apart and am waiting for the return of my prop governor, I think I’m going to remove the nose gear fork and “stake” the bearing bushings to provide some more flexibility in setting the pre-load torque of the axle. This is just a preemptive measure.
I’m working towards having all my little tasks finished and things put back together by the time the prop governor gets back. It will arrive at MT in Florida today, hopefully I’ll have it back by the weekend. I figure I need to get back in the air as quickly as possible if we’re going to really consider making the LOE flyin. I need to get some more stable time on the machine before we head off across west Texas.