10/21/04 It's been a while since I updated this page. I went on vacation, couple of trips and did a lot of procrastination. I did however some work on the airplane. Reinstalling the wings turned out to be a major problem. Old wing root doublers had to be removed. To accomplish that I had to make holes (read remove) large chunks of the fuel tank. Now new doublers have to be fitted, reinstalled in the spar and wings need to be set up. A big pain in my you know what. So in the meantime I decided to work on my wheel pants brackets. I made some brackets out of scrap metal and then decided to come up with a small fairing for it. If I have not mentioned before I don't like fiberglass work and needless to say I'm not good at it. I used modeling clay to come up with the shape and covered it with fiberglass. This is my second set but I'm not happy with it. I sure will try to redo it. If anyone has a suggestion on how to go about it please e-mail me at mtschindler_at_yahoo.com
	6/19/04 I spoke with Steve Winder of Airdale and he suggested I use 1/8" thick plywood for floor and baggage compartment floors. It's not easy to find that thin plywood but as Steve said cabinet makers use it for door surfaces and it's fairly inexpensive. He was right $6.5 for 3x7 sheet. I've decided to make heel plates to protect plywood from pilot and co-pilot footware. I think my jewling is getting out of hand but I like the look of it as opposed to flat metal. I threaded 1/8" brass rod to make door hinge pins. I like that better than cotter pins. I can use nylon lock nut to facilitate easy removal and reinstallation. If anyone has a better idea I'm open for suggestions.
	6/1/04 I'm using stainless steel for the firewall and it would be a shame not to make it look good. I'm going to jewel it. Just to get some practice I jeweled a small console which fits between seats. Console will provide room for fuel selector valve, headsets hook-up, electric elevator trim and who knows what else. Check out my handy work. Firewall is going to be a lot bigger project so a friend of mine made a simple pattern board from 1/4 inch plywood. I hope it's going to work great - I'm sure it will look awesome.
	5/20/04 Slowly I'm putting all the parts together. The most amazing part of the new fuselage is how Steve Winder of Airdale fitted all the mixer controls under the seat. The arrangement is very simple (after you put it together), light and effective. I think this is a great improvement over the original Avid. Teleflex cables are used to activate controls, that allows to free all the space behind the seats for storage - all in flight accessible. I've been fitting control column and rudder pedals but all of it needs more work. The plan is to assemble the whole airplane the way is going to be when finished, just in case something needs to be remade, rewelded or repositioned. At the moment seems that the control column will have to be extended. Co pilot stick is not centered and would be very hard to use in its current position. 5/26/04 My battery has been mounted on the firewall in the past and it worked fine. Short cable run is a big plus. This time I wanted to make a better box for it. I ended up bending 0.060 aluminum into a tray shape and hanging it on the tubing behind the firewall. There is going to be a strap to keep the battery from moving up. By the way if you need battery for your Jabiru Odyssey P625 is the ticket - you can get it from www.batteriesplus.com for about $100 - it's light, dry, small and has a bunch of cold AMP's. I also finished my seats. Steve W. designed separate adjustable seats with folding back for the access to baggage area. I got foam, polyfiber, cloth, piping and cut the pattern out. One of the friends at work did the sewing. They look OK and I can always have them redone. 6/1/04 I'm using stainless steel for the firewall and it would be a shame not to make it look good. I'm going to jewel it. Just to get some practice I jeweled a small console which fits between seats. Console will provide room for fuel selector valve, headsets hook-up, electric elevator trim and who knows what else. Check out my handy work. Firewall is going to be a lot bigger project so a friend of mine made a simple pattern board from 1/4 inch plywood. I hope it's going to work great - I'm sure it will look awesome.
	4/10/2004 - 4/14/2004Ann and I spent several nights sanding, brushing, and washing light surface rust off the fuselage. All welds and places which were heated during the construction had considerable amounts of light rust. I don't like the sandblasting process because of dust, noise and general mess associated with it, that's why we tried to deal with rust in every possible way. 4/23/2004After a brief trip to Florida to Sun-n-Fun we returned to clean the fuselage again. In the end I've sandblasted the whole thing in about 4 hours. Next time I'm going to start there. I have a portable sandblaster which holds about a bag of XB-30 sand, and for $45 I bought a small handheld Turbo Blaster from the local NAPA store. I ended up using Turbo Blaster all the time. It has a small media holding tank, which forces you to refill it often providing a much needed brake from being under the blasting hood. By the way - if you have not sandblasted anything but you are planning on doing so - make sure that you cover your whole body with a uniform or long pants and long sleave shirt , gloves and a face mask are a MUST. I've used Polyfiber two part epoxy primer to spray it white. I had only one quart of primer - that was enough to cover whole fuselage in a light coat - I'll need another quart to finish the job. Based on input from other Avid Builders I bought a HVLP system from Harbor Freight so far that has proven to be the best $79 I've spent. It performed very well and I'm going to use it to spray Polyspray as well as paint the fabric with. A few notables about the new FAT AVID: - notice the flat firewall - no more problems with your feet touching the firewall or not fitting under the firewall offset. - all controls mixer is going to fit under the seat area which now will use adjustable back seats - no more hunched back fiberglass seat - also two separate seats with foam cushions are going to be lighter than fiberglass seat. - larger rudder and offset balanced tail to provide adequate control authority in slow flight.
	4/1/2004 After a 2500 miles journey on the back of a 12-foot trailer, my new fuselage arrived. It looked very nice even if there was a considerable amount of light rust. Unprimed metal doesn't tolerate weather very well. Since I'm going to use Polyfiber finishing systems I wanted to make sure that all products used were compatible with Polyfiber system. I've tested several locally available two part epoxy primers - all aircraft quality - and all without exception were softened and lifted by Polytak or Polybrush. By the way - the best price on all fabric supplies you get from Norm in California call him at 909-883-2232 and tell him that Mark Schindler sent you - you will get 20% off the list price.