July 9- Aug 13: I’ve definitely slowed down the pace of work recently, since we won’t receive our next big batch of parts (QB wing and fuselage) until late 2024 best case. So, I’m sort of pacing myself, and doing more work for pay (flight instructing) in the meantime. Also, we have a lot of vacation travel coming up: Oshkosh Airventure, then a week of sailing in Mexico. But, in spare hours here and there, the fairing work continues: Photos below show the first fiberglass patch I built without Paul and Kacy’s help, for the forward edge of the VS. I also worked on prepping the rudder top fairing for riveting. I needed to order a new countersink tool that didn’t come with the kit, for the 120-degree angle of the CS4-4 flush pop rivets. This rivet is used for holding almost all of the fairings onto the tail feathers, except the rudder-bottom, which is screwed on for maintenance access. I got an idea for using a thin metal backing plate behind the rivets (from Steve of https://vansrv14project.uk/), since the fiberglass is quite thin after countersinking, and seems prone to cracking. The photo below shows these backing plates (made from scrap aluminum sheet with a #30 hole drilled) being glued in place prior to riveting. One more exciting thing was receiving the Hartzell prop! This is the 2-blade metal prop, 72” diameter, as recommended by Van’s for the RV-14. I ordered the prop and engine as a bundle to get a $1000 discount, but the prop was delivered a few months later, and the engine is not expected for another 18 months or so! This leads to a concern about storing the prop for long-term, which I will have to research.

Time spent: 7hr