Fuselage Center Section Joined!
I have been putting in quite a few hours working on the plane during the holiday break. I have been quite blessed in that my new employer shuts down during the week between Christmas and New Years effectively giving us an extra week of vacation. In between the occasional holiday nap I have managed to spend 7 - 9 hours per day on the plane for the past 6 days or so. The result is that the center section of the fuselage has been riveted together and after Neil came over today the longerons have been notched and the center section joined to the tail cone. Here are some pictures going over what has been done up to this point. More (and full size) photos are in the gallery (link to the right).
Here are the spar box bulkheads being match drilled to the side plates.
Seat belt hard points being fabricated and installed.
Double countersinking the 904 bulkhead flange to allow the main landing gear assembly to nest into the bulkhead later.
God has blessed me incredibly with friends like Neil who helped me install heat in my shed. The result is that I am able to prime parts despite it being 29 degrees outside.
The last two images show more detail of how the center section of the fuselage is mated to the tail cone.
What a cute rear end …
The fuse’s that is …
Its been a bit since my last update. Lots have happened in the past few weeks. I got a good amount of time to work on the plane during the Thanksgiving holiday making use of my Dad while he was in town. Since then I have been able to keep the pace up. This weekend I was blessed by a snow storm (I can’t believe that I actually said that) that allowed Patti and I to stay in all weekend and finish riveting the tail section. I was thrilled to have that finished up as some of the rivets were a bit tedius to get to. And to top it all off the tail section was a true and twist free as one could possible hope. Basically over the past few weeks we have been able to:
- Fully rivet the aft fuselage
- Modify Seat ribs for control system access.
- Debur / edge prep seat ribs.
- Mock up center section.
- Match drill center section.
Make sure that you check out the photos in the photo gallery (link off to the right.) Next up is to fit the crotch hard points that will support the anti-submarine belts of the 5pt harnesses.
