Cessna Cardinal New Interior Work

We're replacing the interior in the Cardinal. Yep, high season and our airplane is unavailable. That is a downside. The upside is, well, a new interior. But not before a ton of dirty work.

Look at the pretty bird in the nice clean hangar

That didn't last. I should have put a tarp underneath the airplane to protect the floor that I painted and sealed last spring.

First Things First

The seats had to come out first. They come out every 100 hours of flight time anyway so Maintenance can take a look under the inspection panels that are built into the airplane. So this isn't, for me, an unusual sight.

After the seats came out, we removed the seat belts and sent them to a company in Georgia for new webbing. We changed the color too. The old belts were brown. We're updating to Navy.

Removing the Old Fabric-covered Plastic

The plastic in the old interior was original - from 1978. If you flew with us and looked up at the ceiling, you would have seen the plastic. It looked fine but time and heat tends to make it brittle, so it breaks easily and cracks. The side panels of the plane were covered in carpeting from 1988. Ewe. It was nasty.

Underneath the carpet-covered plastic was foam, put on with adhesive so thick, I should have bought stock in a mineral spirit manufacturer - oh - and placed a tarp under the airplane to catch the drip, drip, drip of adhesive-infused mineral spirits.

At Least I Put Carpet on the Floor on the Inside of the Plane

There is quite a bit of sound-proofing in this airplane. The black rectangles on the ceiling are rubber sound-proofing pads. I don't think there is any more in this plane than in any other plane, but since this is my first interior removal job, the amount surprises me. There is also putty everywhere to seal open areas between the aluminum and duct tape over other places. Yeah, duct tape that is meant to be where it is.

My Job is to get the Goo Off and Expose the Bare Metal

...for which I am earning hours of experience toward my Airframe and Powerplant certificate. I'm not on the fasttrack for that. I just enjoy doing to work and our Director of Maintenance doesn't mind supervising.

The panel on the left is finished. Now on to the wheelwell.