I did the fitting for the spring gear and pulled about 100 rivets tonight, but didn’t take any pictures.
Bolts and fuel line routing
Finished all of the bolts in both gear strut fittings and torqued to the specs in the Construction Standards Guide.
Since I’m going out of order because I need it on the main landing gear to move it around in my 20×20 garage so I can build the wings in here, I needed to button up all of the things on the back of the seat mounts. There are several holes drilled now for the traditional fuel line routing, but since I’m putting in a center console, I may not use them and route through there instead.
Also need to put in the seat belt mounts since they rivet up through the gear channel.
Seat pans
Since I need to get the plane up on the landing gear to make space for the rest of the build, there’s a lot of related things that need to be done and riveted before access to some areas becomes more difficult.
Gear Channel Doublers
Standing on my head and back drilling these with a right angle attachment was not my favorite at all.
Rear wing gussets
These A6 rivets are huge.
Also very happy for gear strut fittings that fit 🙂
Gear strut fittings are back
Got new fittings from Zenith and they look much better.
Sad that I have to paint them.
Also started drilling and riveting the rear wing attach points, which I had held back on earlier in the build.
Right wing started
Flipped a coin and the right wing goes first. Got all of the ribs in the right place and the left ones marked and put away.
Next step is to pull these off, drill to 30, then 20, debur and cortec.
Wing build “table”
I decided based on the amount of room I have to use the shipping crate as a table to build the wings and storage underneith (more on that later).
It’s VERY heavy and I wanted to be able to move it around and out of the garage by myself. $20 in 4 inch castors from Harbor Frieght and I can now move this 250 pound box with one hand.
Uncrating
I’m REALLY tight on space to get everything in my 20’x20′ garage. The only thing left in the crate now is the wing skins and spars.
Designing a sling for those now and then on to building some wings!
Also had a little but of a scare with the windshield. Looked like it had a big scratch in it. Julie and I pulled some of the protective film up and it turns out it’s just a scratch in the film. Phew.
Drilling and deburring
Today was drilling and deburring the forward fuselage and doublers.
Not very picture worthy, but I took some anyway.
