It was a warm, sunny day and I was able to roll it outside to check the GPS, transponder, and the COMM radio. The GPS picked up enough of the satellites to give me position information. The transponder displayed pressure altitude from the blind encoder and received radar replies from the Lincoln tower, and I heard both tower and approach control on the COMM.

This is a great milestone and means I can move on to other things.

The first video is just the headset and tower.

The second video shows the transponder reply. Just beneath the ON in the display you’ll see two quick flashes of an R.

The third shows position after picking up enough satellites.

First fit seems to work fine. Still need to replace the plexiglass but that won’t take much time.

Cleaning up the old strip and replacing the felt. Haven’t tried it yet. Just making one set to see how well it works.

Before photo showing the original window strip.

Doing a little polishing while it’s warm enough to have the garage door open.

The snow isn’t a big deal, but the very low temps are keeping me out of the garage and working on the airplane.  I can heat the garage up to around 35-40 when the outside temps reach 0 or below.

Work is still getting accomplished though when I can sneak in a small part to work and clean it while I’m there.

I removed the original repair, cleaned it up, and installed a new repair.  I used the old holes, which were not drilled in any particular pattern, but they work.  There are more repairs to be made.  Once I get them all complete I will re-evaluate whether or not it looks OK.  I still may make a new one from scratch.

First attempt was a little under driven. a little more pressure and it fit perfectly. Repeated on all rivets.

checking rivet height after bucking.

Back side of the repair before checking rivet height.

MS20470 to go just to the left.

Original patch on the left, new one on the right.

Parts to paint. A few are still waiting for repairs.

This one seems to be in worse shape. Lots of patches, cracks, and dents to fix.

Drilling all the pop rivers out and replacing them with solid rivets.

Trying on for size. The red paint on the fillet is not the final color.