| Date: 01-15-2023 | |
| Number of Hours: 25 | |
| Manual Reference: 26 |
I’ve never documented the upholstery despite spending many many hours and a lot of money on this.
Rather than put you through it all, I’ll just do a summary.
The special Tempur foam seats were made up by a USA company. This is meant to be very comfortable for long trips and importantly the foam is to absorb shock and minimise or prevent spinal damage in a crash situation. The foam is heavy but this is a safety issue.
The manufacturers were nice people and tried hard but in the end I had to do a LOT of tweaking and cutting to get the seats right. Here I have had to adjust the front seat (again) so I could get my legs in and out of the plane!
The cushion did go right to the edge and was much higher. Now it is well back from the opening and curves to minimise the footprint at the front end. Even getting the covers made took well over a year and then quite a few adjustments had to be done.
There was quite a problem getting the height correct so I was as high as possible but not hitting the top of the canopy with my head! Its good now, it took a number of tries to get it right.
The headrest is still not 100%. Again I tried a lot of solutions. I think now its down to test flying for the final tweaks.
The passenger seat is a bit of a disaster. This one is 100% my fault. I didn’t realise when I made the common sump that it would effect the headroom in the back so much. Doing it again I would raise the firewall 2″ and angle the canopy differently.
This is why the passenger gets to sit on a wafer thin cushion. Sorry!!
There are padded arm rests, the stick boot and a few other things to go in later. For now I can sit very comfortably in the front and we can call that part just about done.