| Jabiru J400 Builder
Log - June 2006
6/28/2006 3pm-6:20pm
1) tore down the tent... oh boy i've waited for this day a while...
the tent represents lots of evil like crappy painted parts from
lack of instructions (pot life)... working in the cold... etc....
it's also a sign of progress and boy do i need that
6/27/2006 9pm-11:35pm
1) I've been working at home on the instrument panel... it's ready
to be painted so i'm painting it black now... one note is that i
didn't prime the panel so we'll see how this pure flat black polyurethane
will hold up... the other is that i didn't filter it...and strangely
enough there's a ton of little specks on the panel...almost looks
like intentional metal flakes in the paint.. i don't mind actually
and this paint is actually too shinny even though i got matt...
i might scuff it intentionally to get a dull black but we'll see..i'm
not too worried as i might just coat it with the black rubber stuff
later on anyway as it's a softer feel on the panel
2) i haven't logged the hours spent at home but i estimate that
it was about 15rs... i cut the round holes using this adjustable
hole cutter which was also some other builders suggestions..however
it didn't work too well...the hole is fine but the cutting took
about 2hrs per hole because it heated the aluminum more than it
cut... the tool wasn't meant for metal as it says on the packaging...it
could be that their panel is thinner?... on thin aluminum sheet
it did well when i tried...but not on this panel... also... the
remaining cuts were done on a small mill drill...not perfect, but
did the job...the cuts are good...it's the eye hand coordination
that suffers ;) ... i managed to fit all the instruments and switches...
the circuit breakers and the elt control panel will have to be fitted
elsewhere
6/20/2006 4:30pm-8:23pm
1) so i removed all the plastic masking and removed the fuselage
from the tent... the colors and the design didn't quite turn out
the way i wanted... i got to say that painting the design on is
quite tough and maybe vinyl would have been a better idea...but
what is done is done... it's not too shabby though...at least it's
cheery and that's something
2) did a bunch of cleaning...
3) i guess i'm ready to start on the instrument panel... kind of
planned on doing the upholstry first but i don't even need that
to take off... so i'll work on the panel since i've been in the
mood lately to get to electrical...hopefully it won't be full of
surprises like the painting and filling
6/19/2006 5:30pm-10:44pm
1) taped and masked the shaded areas... this gets the darker green..hopefully
this will go smooth and today is the last day of painting... good
god...
6/18/2006 6:39pm-9:10pm
1) sprayed the orange in the masked areas...like the green, it took
3 batches...6oz, 6oz, 12oz of part A
6/17/2006 9pm-2:47am
1) so it seems that the green is indeed darker green than i had
expected... but not as bad as it seemed last night... it seems that
it's actually a problem with the paint... this green seems to want
to seperate out so quickly and it ends up with this deep green shades
at the top ... almost as if the deep shades are too light for water
or don't like water like oil...so it floats... the problems ends
up being that i make about 3 batches in about 1.5hr and after about
30 minutes you can see that it's starting to seperate...but not
that obivous necessarily..it's bad enough that you can even sort
of see this in some places on the paint job where the paint seperated
out on the plastic masking...there's actually one place at the tail
that seemed to have done this and is affiliated with a tiny run
too... kind of like an oil slick on water... very odd.. i guess
this is the thing you need to tolerate with new/experimental type
of paints such as this waterborne one... i would presume that an
excellent paint wouldn't seperate out so fast.. it could be that
i'm just a newbie at painting too?... nah.. it's the paint or the
instructions ;) ... i guess if you know this ahead of time you would
be much more careful with it..just like the problem with potlife
that the manufacturer didn't bothered to tell me...
2) yup... it looks like a leprachaun swallowed a stick of dynamite
in my tent
3) masked the whole plane for orange..but it's too late to spray
6/16/2006 6-11:56pm
1) tricia finished taping the rest of the plane so we could spray
the green paint on the body of the fuselage, the green turned out
to be much deeper green than expected even though we mixed half
a pint of yellow to get a yellowish green. I wonder if the color
chart we used to pick our paint color is off because when we compare
the colors we get, it is significantly different in the color shades.
6/15/2006 6pm-11:53pm
1) unfortunately we didn't quite finish the masking pattern yesterday
so we continued today but i'm sure we won't be able to paint it
now as it's getting late
6/14/2006 7:30pm-12:10am
1) the paint job from yesterday looks good so i have continued with
masking for the colors...the N number mask was applied and the pattern
was masked off
2) made another spat holder so that i can spray both spats held
up in the air at the same time...i think the spats will be green
with the stripes green expecpt for the last stripe and the N numbers...
sort of need to balance it out because i don't have all that much
colored paint..only 1 quart of green, yellow, and orange...the yellow
is to make the green and orange a bit more yellowish
3) unfortunately there's not enough time to spray the pattern so
will have to do it tomorrow
6/13/2006 5-8:33pm
1) painted the fuselage one more time with half gallon of insignia
white from AFS since it was still grayish against the other parts
such as the rudder... i think this makes it 3 gallons total of white
on all parts... i must be doing something wrong if it takes this
much no? maybe too much overspray? or maybe it was indeed the dark
primer...not sure... i guess only about 2 gallons where actually
used since the remaining was waste from the whole problem in the
beginning
6/9/2006 7:06pm-2am
1) so today is the last day of spraying white i hope...
2) checked the rudder for 20 degrees (98mm) movement left and right...made
some cuts into the rudder stopper to get the full travel
3) removed all parts out of the tent (with tricia) and got it ready
for the fuselage
4) moved fuselage into tent and masked wheels and such
5) sprayed the fuselage white with the remaining paint
6/8/2006 4-8:28pm
1) painted all remaining parts except spats that will be white...also
sanded the rudder with 400 and repainted it since it ran badly
6/7/2006 5:03pm-10:43pm
1) haven't done any log entries the last few days again even though
i worked.u..too lazy to work with the slow laptop..
2) the doors were painted along with some miscellaneous parts..
3) moved in the remaining part into the tent for spraying...should
take 2 days total to get all the control surfaces painted... i can
only do one side at a time... i guess some sort of prop to hold
the control surfaces vertical would be best so that i can paint
both sides... too much work though..so on with the easy
4) sprayed the remaining parts...screwed up the rudder badly...too
bad..it was looking good...i think a drop of water hit it and ran
bad...everything else looks good for the most part
6/4/2006 7:31pm-12:23am
1) didn't get to make a log yesterday... but essentially some stuff
has been fix and again some is broken... it turns out that as i
suspected, there's a short pot life on this paint.. it would have
been nice if AFS had stated this in the directions or in the paint
specs... it was nowhere to be found but they did return my call
yesterday and they did confirm that the pot life is a big issue
and they had 'thought' they put it in the directions... big duh...
i wasted nearly a week because i thought it was other factors such
as clogged gun... they offered a free quart and i'll take it up
when i order more as i think i've spent more than that because of
this anyway... how could they forget to put a pot life statement
on the directions like this?
2) knowing that the pot life is so short i limited the spray to
30 minutes...which is really about 40 minutes since it takes a while
to get the viscosity right... so now i'll only make enough to spray
in 30 minutes... the trick seems that i have to spray a lot of parts
at a time really as it takes more than 30 minutes on all 4 coats
because of the current drying time
3) my new hair drier has bit the dust... it just couldn't take this
topcoat paint and ceased completely after only 2 days... so i had
to put a conventional fan with a HVAC filter behind...i guess if
i used a filter in the first place the hairdryer would have been
ok... but too late for that... the reason i used a hairdryer was
because the hole in the wall is only about 3-4 inch in diameter...about
that of a hairdryer...but the fan will probably hold up better
4) i sprayed the bottom side of the wings yesterday successfully
with this 30 minute rule...no cum looking stuff over my parts :)
yeppi... so today i'm back for more and to do the top... one thing
is that the coats are really quite thin... i'm not sure whether
to keep spraying coats to cover the color blemishes or not... i
do prefer a light airplane and i'd think that one extra coat all
over the plane might had up to 10lbs each? maybe not?...saving 10
lbs would be 10 more for something else...but i'm really not sure
i want to do that as i'd have to buy a lot more topcoat too and
spend more time on each part... or of course i could reprime those
areas but i really just want to finish this project at this time...
5) so a large fan didn't push much air so i went back to a new haridryer
but with a HVAC filter..
6) the wings are painted
6/2/2006 6pm-9pm
1) so yesterday i didn't get a chance to make an entry in this log...not
much got done anyway except that i fixed the ventilation with a
new hair dryer and piped it to the outside of the hangar... tricia
helped me sand the messed up parts from the disasterous day... and
i found out that my spray gun had some serious glogging issues that
led to the dripping paint problem... this topcoat sprays quite diff
from the primer and requires serious changes such as cleaning religiously
2) it seems that even with the changes above it still was a disaster...
it seems that the paint is hardening in the paintgun... after about
30 minutes it started dripping all over the parts again... so i
guess there's more to it... will wait for AFS to call me back and
see what the hell is going on
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