Ramblings from the hangar

Ok so i covered the Mademoiselles wing last night with the burnt orange transparent covering i got from HK and wow! its amazing stuff. a little tricky to seperate the backing from it. but you know what. at 1/3 of the price of its competitors ill stick with it. it irons excelently. shrinks nicely and does not deform or discolour in the slightest unlike solarfilm. its very similar to oracover.

Perhaps this is a good time to talk about covering and the how to's of it. People often tell me they battle to cover their planes. they get warps and wrinkles and it does not stick. well. the most important thing when it comes to covering can be summed up in 1 word. PATIENCE

take your time. do it slowly and evenly and you wont have any problems
for instance. this is how to cover a wing

1.) generally you start on the underside as you dont want the overlap to be on the top.
2.) if the covering is big enough cut a panel big enough for 1 half of the wing, leave 25mm on each side of the wing to compensate for errors and overlap
2a.) To test the temp of the iron(a normal household iron without steam is fine) cut a little covering and place it on the iron face. it should wrinkle and shrivel slightly but should not melt and curl up into a ball.
3.) tack(iron) the covering done in 1 spot about 5mm big on 1 side
4.) now pull it gently to take out the wrinkles and tack it on the opposite side again in a 5mm spot.
5.) now go 90 degrees and tack it again
6.) Keep doing this moving around the wing until you have got a tack spot every 5cm or so. do NOT go in 1 direction as you will get a wrinkle at the end. Go from side to side and across like you would be tightening the wheel nuts on a car wheel or tightening head nuts on a motor.
7.) Once this done the then tack between the gaps and seal it. by doing small tacks around the wing you have eliminated wrinkles
8.) then cut the covering to size allowing for a 6mm overlap. iron it down securely all around
9.) Do the other half of the wing and then the top.
9.) Then take a hair dryer or heat gun(or paint stripper) and gently warm the entire surface, once its warm start concentrating the heat on areas until you start seeing the covering shrink and pull the covering tight. DO NOT Hold the heat gun in one spot too long as you will burn a hole in the covering in no time

For those of you who are curious. the guy with the tarring never came back to us. so no news there. will most likely put another layer of slurry on top of the runway though.