Inspections and Repairs
None required.
Surface Prep
The ailerons and elevators are supposed to be as light as possible so they balance well and don't flutter in flight. The Cozy ailerons have a history of being very hard to balance. The plans even warn you about this ahead of time. They say that it is okay to sand through one-half of the first ply of glass on the ailerons. If this doesn't lighten the ailerons enough, your only recourse is to add lead rods behind the steel counterweight or build new ailerons. Knowing this, I went way beyond the normal surface prep, which is just to roughen up the surface to accept the micro. I actually sanded the raw fiberglass as much as I could until most of the first ply was half-removed. I also sanded each side of the ailerons with my 36-grit sanding board using the 45-degree sanding pattern to level out the surface and knock down the high spots as much as possible before applying the dry micro.
Ailerons -- Filling & Contouring
The hardest part of filling and contouring the ailerons is getting them to stay still! I used small blocks of wood to hold them to the table. I cheese grated the first fill and followed it up with the final fill. Once again, cheese grating makes quick work of the contouring. Contouring the ailerons is bone simple since they're so flat. But one word of caution, pay close attention to the trailing edge! There is the natural tendency to sand that edge too thin. To keep this from happening I set my ailerons just inside one edge of my table. In this manner the table edge serves as a guide to prevent the contouring board from over sanding the trailing edge. As more and more micro was contoured off the top of the aileron, I moved the trailing edge closer the table's edge.
Next step: Skim Coating.