Time to get started on the baggage area. Baggage floors and rear baggage walls didn’t take much. There was some confusion on whether I had the ribs placed in the correct order, but later realized one of the plans was incorrectly drawn. If you, too, are confused, see Detail D on Sheet 25 for the […]
I wasn’t looking forward to these pieces. I was more-or-less dreading these pieces. Why? Well, I’ve long felt that pieces numbered 6XX are holdovers from the RV-6, a plane that offered less prefabrication and required more work to fit. I could probably verify this assumption with some quick research but I’d rather just continue on […]
Well, the time had come to fit the aft skins (temporarily). Fitting these skins was exciting. Fitting these skins was a pain. Alignment, for the most part, was not very difficult. The aft section was pretty straightforward. The skins resist the bend but the holding power of the clecoes makes quick work of bending them […]
Installing the sills and gussets (cabin… gussets, I guess–not the forward fuselage ones) was a lot of work, but not a lot of stress. Tight areas required the compact tungsten bucking bar (I’m not sure what you’re doing with your life if you don’t have a a few tungsten bucking bars). After some universal and […]
An uneventful yet crucial part of the aircraft. The forward fuselage gussets. These were primed with the sills, and installed prior to the sills. Drilling these pieces was a bit of a hurdle, if I hadn’t mentioned that yet (see video) but installation was fairly straighforward.
Priming the cockpit sills has offered some perspective on the white priming process. The “gloss” white primer has been a difficult aspect of the build since introduced to the project. After various thinning and application techniques, I’ve come so some realizations. At times, I believe I was overthinning MEK, lacquer thinner, and acetone all provided […]
The completion of the aft deck was as satisfying as the initial fit. Again, this area just fit together beautifully, with all lines parallel, and the aft end of the piece lining up in every aspect with the aft bulkhead. Again, a testament to the kit quality, not necessarily the build or builder here.
Also fit around the time of the aft deck was the cockpit sills and gussets. These pieces, which haven’t been touched much since the beginning of the fuselage, took some work then and again now to get into place. But the careful work on these and the skins showed. When clecoed, gaps were minimal and […]