I haven’t posted an update in a while for a lack of pictures. We’ve been making somewhat steady progress.
The first thing was to attach various stringers to the Fuselage to provide a shape for the fabric covering. This wasn’t hard, but was somewhat tedious and I spent a few days working on it a little at a time. I did have one screw up which I’m thinking will be an easy fix. The stringer that is on the top of the fuselage from the tail to the aft of the cabin didn’t stay flush with the tube from the vertical stabilizer. So I have a small gap at that spot, but I think I will be able to just put some filler in the gap and smooth it out and not worry about much. The rest of the stingers were pretty straightforward. My fuselage is powder coated, so I had to remove the powder coating so I could slip the stringers on.
The next task was to attach some antenna mount plates and fit up the floor board. The antenna plates were simple and went out without much trouble. The floorboard fits right in, but you do have to cut out part of the flange on the left and right side of the floor board where it interferes with cross tubes in the frame. I also had to remove some material on the aft of the floorboard to make space for some welds. All in all it was easy to do.
After the floorboard was able to sit flat, I had to drill out the floorboard where it contacted some tabs in the fuselage. The size varied, so it’s important to double check everything. Once they were all drilled, I attached nut plates to some of the tabs. Some of them already had holes for the rivets, but a few I had ti drill out myself.
My next task was attaching the baggage window trim panel on the outside of the fuselage. The manual has you make sure everything is lined up and equal and then drill holes into the trim panel through the mounting tabs on the fuselage.
One of the areas I’m working on now is the baggage compartment. This caused me a little heartache in the beginning because I just couldn’t get everything lined up right. First, I assembled the aft compartment outside of the fuselage and drilled the three holes in the aft corners as called out by the manual. I then placed it in the plane and attempted to get it to fix. We couldn’t get it to sit flat against the cross tube and we gave up for the evening to talk with Ed at RANS. After talking with Ed, I loosened up the tape holding stuff together and I also removed the clecos. What I figured out was that the back of the baggage compartment has two pre drilled holes at the top corners. This corresponds to the tabs in the fuselage. This helped set where everything else would go. I then started getting the floor and sides in place. I did remove some material of the baggage compartment floor because it didn’t seem like it would fit right. I still think I had too much material, but it looks fine. (Note: RANS says everything should be an exact fit and you shouldn’t have to remove any material.) I got all the sides to line up about halfway on the tubes and then taped it all up like a mad man. The holes I previously drilled in the aft corners lined up at this point so I clecoed them back together. Then I started to drill holes through the tabs and into the baggage compartment, clecoing as I went. After I got all the holes drilled and clecoed I started to cut the stiffeners to size and locating all the holes along them. You do have to modify the flanges in certain spots to avoid some fuselage tubes. Like other things on the fuselage, it’s not hard to do, just a little tedious. The wing is pretty cut and dry so it spoils a novice builder :-).
I still have the forward baggage compartment to make, but I hope to get that done in the next few days.
The other current project is building up the seats. RANS sells a very complete kit. I have all the upholstery so they will be done done when I get it done.
Maria has been helping a lot with the seats and we should have them finished by Thanksgiving. We have the seat assemblies completes and we are working on sizing the seat internal tube. We stopped at this point the other day because I wanted to clarify it’s purpose. It serves as a sort of anti-crush bushing. The seat frame tube is under bent and when you start attaching the cushions, it bends the frame in. The seat internal tube helps maintain the proper spacing so it sits correctly on the fuselage tubes. One thing we thought would make life easy is to assemble the tangs and bearings and hold it all together with a 1/4″ bolt while you rivet the tangs to the seat frame. If you don’t, then the best way we found was to assemble the bearings and washer one at a time while inserting the bolt. Then remove the bolt to attach the seat back frame. Fun stuff.
Finally, here are some pictures of everything as it stands today. It’s really starting to look like a plane now!
(25 h)
