It’s déjà vu all over again, Rodney

I’ve a feeling that I may have used that headline before, in which case if I have, it is – doubly so. 28AAD, my French Weedhopper’s, pod was damaged during its landing accident. The usual places, the slots underneath at the rear where the trailing links pass through and also, in this case, two chunks taken out of the vertical rear edge on the pod’s right hand side.

The weather’s going to change in a couple of days time and the temperature’s forecast to drop significantly, so now’s a good time before it does to get any fibreglassing done. So this morning’s plan was to get 28AAD’s pod out from under the cover and try to get the repairs done while the going’s good.

So there I was with the pod up on my Workmate bench grinding away with a rotary wire brush in my electric drill just as I had been those several years ago with MYRO’s pod (back in August/September 2009 actually) and when I’d exposed the bare fibreglass ready to take resin, there I was doing the repairs with the same epoxy that I’d used at the time and brought with me when I came to France.

But this time there were not as many splits etc to repair and here are some shots that I took a short while ago while the epoxy is curing. First, the trailing link slot on the left hand side of the pod.

Now the right hand side showing the work I’ve had to do on the trailing link slot and also to replace the chunks taken out of the pod’s vertical edge on that side.

Once the epoxy has cured, it won’t take that long to do the fibreglassing. The little bit that I tried this morning flashed off in a few moments, whereas temperature doesn’t help that much with epoxy, for which curing is more of a time thing.

I doubt that I’ll get the whole job done this evening, but who knows. I was slowed down a bit when I found some patches of old repair that had been applied directly over paint and just came straight off as soon as I put a chisel under them. But if I do, there’s a good chance that I’ll be able to refit the pod back on the airframe tomorrow, which would be very good news indeed!

And it looks as though my wish will be granted! It has stayed warm since I finished typing the above which meant that after rubbing the repairs down, the primer and top paint coats that I then applied have flashed off at an amazing speed.

I gave the repairs a light coat of primer before having my evening meal and then carefully rubbing them down with 320 wet and dry, which I then left for a short while. Then I carefully gave them a blow over with top coat which I again allowed to dry a bit before going back and carefully finishing the job making sure I didn’t over-paint so it either ran or melted the coats underneath and made them bubble up.

I’m very pleased with the results and even the spray paint that I hoped would be pretty close to the existing looks to be a near perfect match! First the trailing link slot on the right of the pod (remember the pod is inverted in the following shots) that was quite badly damaged and the vertical rear edge on the same side that had had chunks taken out of it. Lovely repair!.

Now the trailing link slot on the left hand side that wasn’t too badly damaged but became a bit more so when I ground the paint and fibreglass away from around the repair. I’m very pleased with it!

And finally the nose that had a little bit of damage at the rear of the nose wheel slot and two large scores in it, one on each side, where the steering arms had dug in, presumably when the aircraft was moved after its undercarriage had collapsed. Neat enough!

So it looks as though I will get the pod back on 28AAD tomorrow after all, which will be significant as it will mark the true beginning of the reassembly process. I just hope it all goes as well as today has 😉