Aft Fuselage HOBBS 685.5 hrs

Last weekend I finally reached the point where I could start assembling some of the sub-assemblies I have, up to this point, been building. I gotta say, as I started cleco-ing big pieces together to form the aft fuselage, it was about as much fun as I've had on the project so far! I really enjoyed this.

The wings and empennage were fun too, but the fuselage is a whole different beast. It has a certain allure to it, probably because it is the part of the airplane where the occupants reside. Whatever the reason, this is getting fun....I snapped a lot of pictures.

Forgot to leave these two rivets out--so I had to drill 'em out, I think this is just for the RV7's? This is one place where the tail spring will attach to the fuse structure.

Here you can see me test fitting the upper end of the tail spring. You have to cut out a notch in the bottom of the skin and open up the 'rabbit hole' for the fillet weld. Not too difficult and it fit nicely.

This is a shot of the assembly--minus the J-stringers (aka J-channel or J-stiffeners) running down the side of the fuse. I wanted to get his cleco-ed together before I did my trim work on these. Not sure how smart that was...it was kind of a pain getting them in there. But, it did allow for nice trim work, as you'll see.

I just had to attach my bell fork and tailwheel...just cuz...it looked cool, no fuctional reason whatsoever. ;)

Cutting the ends of the J-stringers was a little tricky. The plans arent very clear about how to tackle this IMHO. My advice is cut the forward ends just like the print shows and then custom cut each one on the aft side (shown here). As you can see, I notched them around the alum bar. You dont have to be so precise...structurally it will make no difference, but it was kind of fun to trim 'em up nice and I liked the way they came out.

You may notice I forgot to flute my bulkheads on the curved areas on top. Whoops...no problem, I can do that later when I disassemble it for dimpling.

Same deal with these J-stringers...had to notch around the tail spring.

And here are a couple more shots with the J-stringers installed and drilled. Van's says to check for straightness of the fuselage before drilling. This really puzzles me...it doesnt say what to do if your fuse is crooked!?? My response is, there is not much you could do...its pre-punched by golly, it is what it is once you cleco it together. If its crooked its because it was fabricated crooked at the factory. Exactly the same argument I had with the wings, its not needed...they dont require a jig precisely because they are CNC punched. Anyhow...sorry about my rant, I did check it, and surprise, surprise it was straight. ;)

If you look close on these last two shots, you can see I have the J-stringer on top of both of the aft tail skins instead of between the two. Kind of hard to explain unless you are actually doing this part of the project, then you would understand. I couldnt tell in the plans if it shows the orientation of this stringer? I did it this way initially (as shown), but I dont think this is the way Van's intended so I am going to switch it when I rivet it. Either way would work from what I can tell.