Fuselage 10

March 22, 2015

33 hours - 598 hours total
Over the past two weekends I've spent a lot of time working on the airplane. The wife has been out of town, so I've spent nearly all my free time at the hanger. So I'll walk you through the progress to date.

Following completion of the lower fuselage section it was time to assembly the rollbar. Looks pretty simple, and it was, just a lot of work. The roll bar is made of two forward, two aft curved pieces of material. The forward and aft curved pieces are held together with two plates containing 24 rivets each. The forward and aft curved assemblies are then held together with one inner-diameter metal strip and one outer diameter metal strip. Again the metal strips hold the forward and aft pieces together. Everything needs to be cleco'd in place. final drilled, disassembled, deburred, reassemblied with clecos and then finally riveted together.

 Example - metal plate joining two curved elements of the rollbar,

 Finished assembly- approximately 88 rivets on the inner diameter, LP- 4-3's and approximately the same number of rivets on the OD, except CS 4-4 countersink rivets.

 The rollbar is attached to the lower fuselage via two mounting blocks.

 Rollbar temporarily installed to the lower fuselage. There is a significant amount of match drilling to the rollbar mount brackets,

A couple of pictures of the completed installation.

Next part of the assembly was to install the baggage compartment bulkhead and rollbar support. The baggage bulkhead is currently attached to the baggage floor structure. When the aft cone is attached the bulkhead will be riveted/attached to the fuselage skins.

 As you can see, I've gone back to sections 10 nd 11 of the build to install the vertical stabilizer and rudder and the stabilator. More to come- decided final assembly would require another day, one where me brain was functioning a little clearer.

Fuselage 9

February 2015 through March 7, 2015

20 hours, with approximately 565 hours invested in the project. The last couple of months have been a blur and my documentation of the build has suffered. I hope to do a better job moving forward.

You should be able to notice some differences in the background of these pictures. I've moved once again. This time to a hanger at KAVQ to complete the project. All the subassemblies are reunited- tailcone, rear control surfaces and wings. Yesterday I completed section 23 of the build the lower fuselage assembly. I feel pretty good about the quality of the build.

MOVE DETAIL TO COME

This is a view of the lower left fuselage assembly. All stiffeners installed. You can see the wings in the background.

 A couple of picutres inboard left side. I decided to prime the interior lower side skins, but keep the floors unprimed.

 Right side ready to skin.

 A view of the hanger- T-30 size. Large enough......actually a huge amount of space compared to the garage.

 Picture of the right-side wing cut-out and stiffener.

 Both fuselage side skins installed.

 Pilot and passenger vent system installed.

Fuselage - 8

March 8, 2015

Post of progress January 25 - 27 2015 25 Hours Total 545 hours

 

25 hours

Fuselage - 7

March 8, 2015

I've really done a poor job keeping this blog updated. So, I'm going to attempt to get caught up again. The last time I updated the blog was early January. I've made some good progress. I'm going to make three updates. This post covers activity between January and January 24, 2015.

25 hours- Total project time 520 hours [approximate]