Chapter 24 - Section 1

Map Pockets

The first thing to do in this Chapter is to fabricate the map pockets. Instead of making 2 map pockets separately (per Plan), I combined them into one as follows:

Shaping the Foam

I gathered a couple left over 2" foam pieces - enough to make a 10 1/8" x 12" rectangle. I glued them together with 5 min. epoxy. Then I trimmed it to 10 1/8" x 12" x 2" size. The extra 1/8" was for accommodating the cut line later on.

I located a couple wood strips and cut them to 1 1/2" x 10" and 1 5/8" x 10" respectively. Then I clamped the foam between the 2 wood strips. The wood strips were used as a height gauge for shaping the foam. With everything clamped down, I took a long sanding board and sanded down the foam to the Plan's dimensions. I rounded off the edges so that the BID will lay down nicely later on.

I then taped down the foam block with packing tape, including the table top around the block.

I wet out 2 BID layers (one at a time) and squeegeed out the excess epoxy between two sheets of plastic. Then I drew a 12" x 10" rectangle on the plastic for ease of placement onto the foam.

I removed the plastic and shaped the glass over the foam with a brush.

After the epoxy cured, I popped the map pocket loose, trimmed the edges to 1/2" wide and cut it in half. Now I have both of my map pockets.

[Hindsight] I did not measure the distance between the control rods and the fuselage walls before I made the map pockets. I just followed the Plan's dimensions. It turned out that the spacing at the back end of the map pockets was too thick. I ended up doing a bit of surgery to make it fit.