Closing Out Sections

Thanks to the timely arrival of another load of ProSeal, I was able to close out 3 open sections in the build manual that were in some way or another waiting for some sealant job to get done.
Before this weekend work started I was able to remove some more of the Blue Plague that was sticking to the tip of the right wing.

I forgot to take a picture when it was all off but it looks close to what you see above. Quite some scratching again, but nothing deep.

The last days were incredibly hot - even for Tucson. The monsoons are still not anywhere close and so it was a dry heat, and that's the only positive thing to say about it.

This was the sun setting on the last cooler days before the weekend, which is to say it only got to the lower hundreds.

Even the local animals (this one is a particularly young bunny that has not experienced another summer before) were struggling with this heat.
So I decided to get up before 5am each day to be able to get some work done outside without collapsing. Even then it was in the lower 80s.

It was time to mix the smelly ProSeal and get started on sealing the firewall - again. First a look at the beautiful sight of the installed engine.

Then I filled a syringe with ProSeal, in the hopes of making less of a mess, but as you can see, I still am not good at putting the stuff only where it is needed.

It worked much better on the side skins where I sealed the leftover rivet holes from the reinforcement angles. That is because I used blue tape with a slightly oversized hole punched into it as a template. After peeling the tape off I was left with a perfectly round seal.

I also sealed the rivet heads from riveting on the heater box. The manual did not ask for it but I do not understand why as these rivets are providing the same risk of letting gases from the engine seep into the cabin. Angles were too bad to get a shot at them though, so no photos.
This step completed section 54.

After the ProSeal task was done, I put the lower cowl on...

... (pretty, isn't it?)... and installed the SCAT hose, which completed section 49.

I also gooped up the penetration holes in the firewall that contain the cables and wires. I used red RTV for this and not the suggested firewall sealant. I was considering using the rest of the ProSeal but decided against it. If I ever need to pull a wire or want to add another one, removing the RTV would be easier than any of the other sealants. And this completed section 50.

The idea is now to leave the lower cowl on and to remove the instrument cover to finish up the pitot line plumbing. I will try to also install the Ts to plumb in the backup steam gauges at this point and then plug their ends. There is also a tad more wiring work to be done for the avionics which includes running the missing wire from the radio to the AV-50000 for the serial port.
Additional antennas for the PCAS, ADS-D and the APRS system that I will add are sitting in the shop and I think I might add those now as it will be easier to crawl into the tailcone without the tank installed.