Fuselage

August 15,18-19, 2005

Worked on the bends in the main fuselage longerons. These long pieces of angle help to provide stiffness along the length of the fuselage and have to be bent and twisted to the shape of the fuselage. This picture does not show the final twist that is put in the longerons.

August 20-21, 2005

Match drilled the aft canopy decks to the longerons. This step has to be completed prior to putting the final twist on the longerons. After match drilling, I completed the final twisting process and some trimming on the aft ends. They appear to have come out to with the specifications in the manual.

August 22, 24-27, 2005

Cut the aft stiffeners to proper length. Began clecoing the ribs to the bottom tail section skin. At right is the aft tail cone assembly.

Fit the side skins to the aft fuselage assembly. I spent many a cussing hours getting the aft tailcone section shown above to fit properly at the aft end of the tail section. With a little persistence and several hours, I was finally happy with the fit. The problem was that the tailcone skin didn't have quite enough curve in it to fit the aft-most ribs. The skin is quite thick on this section due to the mounting of the empennage so it was difficult to work into shape. I'll have to retouch with primer because I scuffed it up pretty good.

August 28, 31, 2005

Checked the aft tail section for alignment  with plumb bobs to make sure there was no twist. Everything looked good. On to  match drilling everything. Running low on clecos. Had to order some more.

September 1-6, 2005

Deburred all skin edges and rivet holes. Dimpled bottom, side and tailcone skins. A mixture of hand squeezing dimples and use of the c-frame dimpler were needed to reach all the holes.

Dimpling the aft side skin. There are a few holes to dimple in the curved section of the skin. You have to hold the skin at just the right angle to the dimple set in order to get a solid dimple.

I am deferring the prep and priming of these skins until I get the center section seat and baggage ribs ready to prime This will give me a bigger batch to shoot with primer and save a little setup and teardown time.