Well, after lots of stress, I'm finally one step closer. Between work and studying for my PPL checkride, I was able to get quite a bit accomplished. Made some mistakes, but in the end, everything was able to work out.

Public disclaimer:
Read Instructions.
Read Instructions.
Read more instructions.

The gear doors finally came in and that was the first task. Since this is an all electric model, I knew the gear doors would probably increase efficiency, and every little bit helps at this point. After reading the instructions, and starting on the gear doors, I realized, I did NOT read the instructions.. I did, but I was in the incorrect part of the book. Ooops! Now, some people may think, why are you working on a model like this if you didn't even read the instructions. Well, sorry. I know next time. Painful lesson learned! Either way, we recovered, and that's all that matters.

Gear Doors: Looks complicated, but if you read the instructions, you'll be golden. They'll practically build themselves. After making my first mistake, I was able to recover. Laid the center two gear doors on the fuse and they looked great. The center former for them to mount to took a little sanding, but it was a successful operation. I went ahead and laid the doors down on the belly, and marked where I would need to mount the wooden blocks. Crazy enough, they were PRECISELY were the old belly pan cover was. That was pretty awesome! I will totally admit, the center two doors kicked my butt, but I was determined! Next up was the upper strut doors and the covers. With this older model, the new doors have some excess material. This was trimmed off, and it looked great. After trimming, a light sanding, and I was ready for round two of doors. (I lied again. Didn't read the instructions.) I placed the ploy-ply and thin wood shim underneath the skin of the fuse, and marked my holes to drill. This poly-ply and wooden shim is used for mounting the strut door hinge to something stable. Next I went ahead and painted the doors using rattle can. A lot of people will knock me for this, but amazingly enough, the paint looked FANTASTIC! With the little resources I have, rattle can just economically made sense. If you told me the original model was sprayed with rattle, I'd totally believe you! The test fit of the doors looked FANTASTIC! I kept telling myself, "Even after all these mistakes, Uncle Bob can still harness his engineering and make my subpar skills look professional." There's nothing like a BVM kit.. After messing with the geometry on the strut doors for about 10 minutes, I was able to get them looking great! I did get a little confused on the wire that holds the door to the strut, but after seeing a photo of a proper setup, it clicked and fell right into place.. Hey, look, instructions! It's now I realize, either read instructions or stop going. So... I finally did what all proper modellers do, and read the instructions. (It was all bliss afterwards.) I have not gotten to the lower gear doors as I'm waiting on some strips of brass to come in. Once that comes in, I'll be able to finalize the doors.

Battery Shelf: Former 4 of the old kit was in the way of where the battery shelf should be. After a little cutting on the former, I was able to create a battery shelf out of thin ply and install it in the model. I did go back and apply some carbon fiber cloth to make sure the fuse was still structurally sound. On the plans, it looked like the shelf was right at the mounting location for the fan. After cutting out some very thin ply, creating some formers to reinforce the tray, I mounted the trays, applied aeropoxy and boom. It worked fantastic! I'll apply velcro later to hold the batteries in place. I referenced the plans multiple times to make sure that where I planned on putting the trays, was the correct place.

Motor and thrust tube: After mounting the motor, it was time for the thrust tube. I followed the instructions carefully, and it was a cake walk. I used some blue masking tape to hold the thrust tube together, installed it in the plane, trimmed excess, and finally got ready to install it permanently. I didn't get any tape with the thrust tube, so I spent about 5 minutes at Lowes trying to find some tape I thought would be suitable. There's some Scotch packing tape that advertises it'll stick to, "any cardboard guaranteed" and dang, it was good stuff! As soon as it touched the plastic, it was stuck. This made me feel very confident I made the right choice. Carefully applying a piece of tape next to every masking tape, allowed me to "permanently" set the thrust tube diameter. I saw in the instructions where it said use a broom handle to apply the tape to the thrust tube so it would still hold its curvature, and this proved, of course, to be an excellent move. After getting it taped up per the book, and installed, it looked great! Not a single gap anywhere between the motor and the thrust tube.

Luckily I am able to still use the existing cockpit with the battery setup I'm running. (Twin 5 cells with single 2 cell) So I'm not too worried about anything else as far as building goes. After I get all the wiring finalize, I will verify the CG and determine the final resting place for the 2 cell battery. I will use some thin ply to either create a battery pocket, or battery tray. Either way, battery removal for it will be easy. I firmly believe the model will CG out pretty close to what the plans call for. I have decided to hold off on lights at the moment as I'm running out of time. My plan is to have this plane ready before the 40th anniversary of the GSW event, and so far, it's looking good. I'm just trying not to add too much to my plate..

What's left:

• Clean up the wiring. I don't plan on this taking forever, but I am a little bit of a freak when it comes to clean wiring installs. I think that's the old Low Voltage integrator in me.
• Verify the brakes work. If not, a new O-ring will be needed. Luckily I've got some.
• Re-attach the wing servo pocket cover.
• Mount the receiver.
• Range test and GO FLY!