Fitting the top/aft fuse skins...sure does look cool...I told my girlfriend, these curves are only second to yours! That's a sexy looking airplane! ;) As cool as this is, the plans say to fit them...remove, dimple, deburr and then set them aside until later. There is no hurry to riveting these in place since they just make it harder to get into the aft fuse. Although, there shouldn't be much I have to do back there...wire routing, static line and the servo motor (which I don't have yet). I'll get those items knocked out shortly so I can rivet these bad boys in place.
Moving onto the baggage compartment and bulkhead...and taking care of the details there. This lower corrugated panel is straightforward, just match drill it to the bulkhead. I'll add nutplates later.
The top corrugated panel is a little different however...you have to radius the corners at 8 1/2". I have a drafting compass, but it doesn't go as large as 8 1/2"...so this task left me pondering things for a second. How will I create the radius? I don't have a nice 8 1/2" coffee can laying around. ;) Probably many ways to do this if you use your imagination. I first sketched out some rough guidelines with my ruler. Then I fashioned a piece of string at 8 1/2" and drew a nice radius outline with my sharpie...I used to do this little trick back in my carpentry days, with a steady hand and some practice, it works fine for a somewhat non-precise radius such as this...it doesn't have to be perfect. I just wanted it to look nice and professional...
Rough trimming...for a last minute, sanity/fit check on the plane before cutting to final size.
And voila...turned out real nice, once I filed down the edges and deburred it, as you can see it had the professional look I was hoping for.
And here it is cleco-ed in place...also notice I added the notches for the seat belt cables that run to the aft fuselage. I still need to add some wear blocks to this panel...next session.
Working on the details of my two oil/tool/misc hidden compartments under the baggage floor. Not quite there yet on these but I'm getting there.
And here I bounced around a little bit in tasks--tying up some loose ends. I riveted the arm rests and the cap strips in place. The plans aren't real clear about when to do a lot of this stuff...so you just have to be real careful that it isn't going to severely inhibit installing other items later before riveting. By doing these now, I don't think it will effect anything later...we'll see how it goes...
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