Fuselage - AFT Section

2005-08-06 - AFT Fuselage Assembly. (5.5 Hrs).

Assembled the AFT fuselage, in preparation for riveting. However, when I started actually clecoing things together I discovered that I had not dimpled several bulkheads, and two J-channels. As usual, this took more time than I would have thought, but I am now ready to start riveting.

I needed to drill the rudder cable holes in F-710. And, I needed to debur and dimple all of the holes in F-707, and F-708. So, I decided to go ahead and prime the AFT tie-down.
I discovered a missed hole in F-707, that needed to be fixed. This is before.
This is after..
I decided to go ahead and debur and drill all of the holes in F-706. These will be hard to get to once the rest of the AFT fuselage is riveted together. If I do not rivet F-729 to the bottom of the fuselage, then I should be able to remove F-706 , later, but I did the dimples, anyway. I will be glad when this flimsy piece is riveted in for good.
I needed to enlarge the hole for the tie-down. Note, that the plans say to do this later, but since I have already riveted the tie-down to F-712, I thought I'd better drill this hole now, before I rivet F-712 to the tailcone.
I cleco'd F-712 to the tailcone, and noticed that the hole was not aligned with the tie-down. So, off came F-712, and the hole got drilled one size larger.
Make sure the tie-down and nut will fit--that's better.
I decided to rivet F-712 to the tailcone before clecoing the tailcone to the AFT fuselage--came out pretty good.
A couple of those rivets are a little overdriven (a common problem for me). After riveting F-712 to the tailcone, I realized that I could have squeezed these rivets on the back side.
I decided to rivet the bulkheads to the bottom skins before installing the other pieces; otherwise, I would have to reach over the side skins to do the bottom rivets. Upside-down works best here.
It was a little loud for Bessy, so I gave her some ear muffs. Emmie is jealous, but she is a little too small for people ear muffs. I'll have to find some mini-muffs for her.
F-707 and F-708 are riveted on, but I decided to hold off on the F-729 bottom rivets, for now, in case I want to remove F-706 when fitting the center section. I guess I need to look at some other sites, again. It seems that I look after I do something, rather than before.
All of the bulkheads are back on, and the bottom J-Channels are in. Note, that it is a lot easier to cleco on the tailcone, and then slide the J-Channels into F-711 and F-712, rather than slide F-711 and F-712 onto the already installed J-Channels, as Van's instructions had us do earlier. This is pretty obvious, once you have done it. Sliding the tailcone/F-711/F-712 assembly on with the J-Channels already in place is like a monkey f'ing a football, which some people think is pretty funny. Again, I think Van's tech writers got a good laugh when they wrote that up.
When I installed the upper J-Channels, I discovered that Dufus had not dimpled those, either.
Those bottom clecos did not fit perfectly, so it was time to Plumb it again, just to be sure.
Side skins are back on...
...and everything is ready to rivet. Man, it's hot, here in Texas--we'll rivet tomorrow.