Finally got back into the swing of airplane building last weekend and this past weekend. Tonight will be another build session, but I’m accomplishing a decent amount of little things, so I don’t want to get too far behind.
The last things I had to do to wrap up the boot cowl area was to fit-up the instrument panel and visor.
I started the visor and it went together relatively simply. It’s not even all the way across, but I’ll be attaching some sort of fabric to it and the ends are around 1/8″ different on each side. (I will be waiting for people to mention these differences when the plane is flying. I figure it’s a way to gauge readership. ha ha)
After that was done, I drilled all the pilot holes in the instrument panel blank to 3/16″. I then drill one hole in the panel frame to 3/16″ so I could attach the blank and then transfer drill the remaining holes. One thing I noticed when putting the blank on was that it seems like it is just a hair too wide, so I had to fuss with it for a half a second to get it past the tubes and flush with the panel frame. I didn’t want to shave material off the side of the blank, because the holes are pretty close to the edge already, but if anyone has some thoughts I’d be happy to hear what everyone else has noticed.
After the panel frame was drilled out to 3/16″, I went and enlarged all the holes on the panel blank to 5/16″ because they will receive some rubber grommets. Don’t enlarge the panel frame holes lest you want to buy more aluminum.
After that was done, I had to enlarge a few holes on the boot cowl skins and I added an extra two holes where the top side skin rivets to the side skin. This seems to be a popular addition; including the factory.
One thing I do have to modify for sure is the fuselage tube exits on the top side skins. My skins are hitting the tube, so I will remove some material to get rid of that. The one thing to be careful of is not to remove too much or else you would need to make new closeouts for that area.
After all that I removed the entire boot cowl assembly for storage while the fuselage gets covered and painted.
Next was to get the fuselage on the rotating stands so I could move it around myself and to ease with covering. One thing I noted though was that I’m not sure how I can cover/paint the tail with it on the rotator unless I just made a very bulky mount back there. I’ll be in contact with some other builders or RANS, but if anyone gets the notion to speak up, I’d like to hear some solutions.
With it up on the stands, I was then able to start on the tasks I needed to complete prior to covering. The one I started and almost finished this past weekend was upgrading my seat tracks. RANS changed the seat track system shortly after I bought my kit. I didn’t see the new ones until I had riveted my system in and I had sort of accepted what I had. After seeing another builder’s plane with the new style though, I really wanted to switch them over. RANS has been using the old style on a lot of planes for a while I was told and I don’t think there is a safety issue. My main reason was it made me feel better with the design of the new tracks holding me in the plane.
That means I had/have to drill out 22 stainless steel rivets. I failed at this task on some wing rivets, but the new found knowledge meant I was able to make pretty quick work of them. At least as quick as stainless steel can be drilled with a hand drill. I would have finished yesterday, but my bit gave up on the last two to be done. I’ll get those taken care of today and hope the new parts arrive today as well.
Maria helped get the fuselage on the stands and also helped complete some of the smaller tasks like attaching nut plates in the baggage area. I had neglected to do these when I was doing the baggage compartment out of what I can only assume was me really wanting to move onto something else.
One highlight of putting the fuselage on rolling stands was moving it out into the parking lot to sweep the garage out. I missed getting a picture, but it was funny to just see a plane sitting in a condominium parking lot.
The last issue that I’m trying to figure a solution for is around the boot cowl strips that go around the firewall. You can see it in the last two pictures below. I’m not sure why this happened or how to fix it, so if anyone has an idea or did something already, please let me know.
(11 h)
