Comet
Sailplane Project
It was dark because of
the approaching storm when I got up this morning. Then about 7:45 a.m. as I
was having my morning coffee, there was a loud clap of thunder and bottom
just fell out of the sky. When I started covering the the top of the stab,
the clear dope began blushing with the increased humidity, so I added a
touch of the Randolph's retarder shown below to the clear dope and that
cleared it right up.
I completed the yellow silk covering on
the top of the stab, covered the top of the stab tips with orange silk, and
put on two coat of retarded clear nitrate dope as shown below. The retarder
seems to have brought out
(enhanced) the color of both the yellow and orange
silk, but that might just be my imagination. Silk over Polyspan Lite truly
makes a bullet proof covering!
Because it continues to rain, I will let doped top of the
stab dry out overnight and then put a third coat of retarded clear nitrate
dope on the both sides of the stab in the morning first thing. So as you
can see, I am progressing along, even though I am a slow builder. Ever since
I retired from LTV Aerospace, I refuse to work to any kind of a schedule or
budget!
I just opened the new 3-yard package of orange silk that you
can see on the work table in the picture above. I will now start
covering fin, rudder, and sub rudder with orange silk, but I will definitely
not finish them today before I quit. I find covering with silk a pretty
intense effort and I treat myself to periodic breaks for a cup of coffee and
potty call now and then. God how love our hobby!..........Tandy