Dohh…

… in the words of Homer Simpson. Rosie very kindly rang me today to tell me where she bought the plastic sheet that she’d made the last screen from. She told me and then just happened to read out what the invoice said … 1.5mm sheet 1025mm wide and 2050mm long. I said that I couldn’t see how she could have made the screen from that as it’s 2300mm wide. She said, ‘Oh yes you can, you cut it diagonally.’ 😕

What a twerp I am – that hadn’t occurred to me. The screen isn’t an oblong shape – it’s more the shape of an eye with an elongated bottom. I checked by marking out a space the size of a sheet on the lawn and then placing the old screen on it. Loads of room around it if you place it diagonally as Rosie said. What a clever girl! That’s saved me a lot of hassle – I then ordered the plastic I need straight away and who knows, if I’m lucky, it might even arrive tomorrow in time for the long week-end. Then anything could happen because as you’ll see below, things are moving briskly along 😉

After patching the holes in the instrument panel, all I then had to do was mate the top and bottom together. Easier said than done. With the instruments in, the panel is quite heavy and very unwieldy and you need at least two pairs of hands to hold the two parts in the correct position while you drill the bottom part through the holes in the top. I solved the problem by hanging the instrument panel upside down from our clothes dryer so it was more or less in the correct position in the panel top, which was lying also upside down on the patio table beneath. I won’t bore you with the details but it worked OK. I found at the end that one of the old end holes in the panel top had been drilled too close to the edge and had split when I secured the fastener so I had to remove that fastener and also the adjacent one and spring the panel parts far enough apart for me to do a repair using fibreglass cloth and epoxy resin. Annoying, but you begin to get used to these continuous snags – it’s an old aircraft after all. Here’s a pic of the panel on the table after I’d finished.

I couldn’t wait to get it into the pod, of course which I did fairly quickly and easily, and here are two more pics showing the final result.

I was very pleased with the outcome – now it’s beginning to look much more like a microlight again. I also think it’s a huge improvement over what was there as well. It’s only fitted in temporarily as the pod is still suspended on string while there’s no screen. But the panel won’t need to come out again so my next job will be to route and cable-tie all the wiring and tubes. That shouldn’t take too long to do and the next job after that will be fitting the screen. So if the plastic does arrive tomorrow, there’s a very good chance if the weather holds that I might get that done on Bank Holiday Monday. Then things do start to get exciting, because at that stage I can start thinking about fitting the engine 😀