A bit more Weedhopper stuff

My friends are all away on breaks and vacations until next week so I’m trying to make the best use of my time while they’re gone. The seller of the airspeed indicator that I’ve bought for 28AAD, my French Weedhopper, has told me that it’s in the post and likely to be delivered tomorrow, and as I want to put the Weedhopper to bed so I can turn to the work I have to do on the X-Air, there was one more job that I needed to do and wasn’t looking forward to, quite honestly.

That was to modify the Weedhopper’s inter-wing covers, or the upper one to be exact. Because the aircraft was previously fitted with a 582 engine that requires a different exhaust mounting to the 503 which it now has, there’s an extra hole in the upper cover and because it also had a ballistic parachute attached, there’s an even larger one more or less right in the cover’s centre. Both holes can be seen in the following image.

MYRO’s old cover didn’t need and didn’t have these holes but although it’s red, it isn’t suitable to be used on 28AAD. The reasons are that (a) it’s in rather poor shape compared to the Weedhopper’s one and (b) it’s all red whereas the front of the Weedhopper’s cover is yellow to match the leading edges of its wings.

So what to do? I decided that rather than try to patch the holes, which I didn’t think would look quite right, instead I’d make some covers for them which could be applied using Velcro. I thought that, although it’s unlikely, doing so would also give a new owner the chance to fit a ballistic parachute of their own and even re-upgrade the engine to a 582 if they wanted to.

Although MYRO’s old cover is a slightly different shade of red, I didn’t think that this would matter and cut the pieces I needed for the job from its old lower inter-wing cover so I still have its old upper one should I need it. It’s taken me a couple of days with my trusty old Singer sewing machine but eventually here’s a shot with the two new covers lying next to the holes that they have been made to fill.

And here’s the final shot with the two covers Velcroed in place.

They seem to be pretty well attached so hopefully they will remain in position in flight. I’ll only know for sure when I get to finally assemble the Weedhopper’s wings and get it up into the air, which I can’t do soon enough for my liking 🙂