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. |