Left and Right Longerons Drilled

Only one picture of this but it took over 5 hours to complete. Drilld all the holes down both sides of angle aluminum the entire length of the body. I didn't count them, but there are a lot of them.

F-770 Side Skins

The sides of the forward fuse need to be bent at the rear to accommodate the complex curve into the aft fuse. On one side of the bend it is a tight 90 degrees. At the other side it is a wide sweeping arch. This was done by clamping angle down to form one side. Then I match drilled some angle to the existing holes to pry on.

The bend line. The hole you see here is for the side steps behind the wing.


The angle attached.



The first attempt. The back side is not quite as sweeping as I had hoped. I will adjust.





After adjusting a little, then the test fit. I think they fit pretty well. Here are the two sides.

More Cockpit Parts Fitting

OK, today I fit the right forward skin. It fit just as nicely as the left side. Here is a couple of shots.






I also drilled the holes for the external steps.



Then fitted the left and right steps.





The I did the arm rests inside. Sorry, its upside down.

Bought Some Clamps to Today :)

Bought Some Clamps to Today :)

Join Center and Tail sections

Today is a good day!!! It's is getting larger and with this addition, it is officially too heave for me to lift by myself. Here you can see the joining of the Center and Tail section. I was surprised how easy the two sections went together. Other builders have said that this was a difficult task.

First I installed the seat and baggage floors to make the structure rigid.








The the two sections could be joined together. Here is the initial lineup.









And just to make it official, I test fitted one side skin. Hopefully the other side will be tomorrow.

Rivet Center Section Skin

With Debbie's help, I have finished riveting the center section belly skin. Looks pretty good from this angle. We only messed up 4 rivets which were promptly drilled out and replaced.





With that finished, the next step is fluting and drilling the last seat ribs (outside ribs). Fluting is the process of creating small kinks in metal in order to cause a bend in the material. Here is one rib.



And here is the opposite side installed.

New Building Table

Big thank you to Jay Kurtz at South Lakeland Airport for loaning me this great fuse building table. It just barely fits in the garage but it will insure things are straight and level. Here are some pics.






Even Bentley seems to like it.




So on to building. I have made the cuts in the lognerons to fit the F-711 bulkhead which will some day attach the horizontal stabilizer. This was done with the cutoff wheel. Then a test fit to ensure everything lines up correctly.






Also got 1/2 of the center section belly riveted with Debbie's help. Moving along.

Rivet Seat Ribs to Main Bulkhead

Today I have riveted the seat ribs to the main bulkhead. This was pretty straight forward except for one thing. I was looking at the plans one last time and have found that that all the ribs marked Left don't actually go on the left side. The second set inward are to be reversed so that the right side has one left rib, and the left side has one right rib. Who knows right.

Here is a pic of what I am talking about.



The two circled ribs are swapped so they are oriented in the opposite direction as the rest. As bolt holes have already been drilled in these, they didn't line up when I switched them around. I re-drilled the holes which created a slot instead of a nice hole around the bolt. Learning from a previous mistake, I have learned in these situations you can make a doubler plate with the correct hole location to fix the issue. In this case I made the doubler plate large enough so that it will grab the next rivet as well for added stability. Tiny bit of extra weight but it saves the part.



Here are some other shots of the center section frame going togeather. (This is where you will sit eventually).

Center Section Priming

Sorry again, no post for a while. I spent the last week or so Deburring and dimpling. Its really no fun and I don't want to bore you with it.

Yesterday I was able to prime all these pieces.



Tonight I installed all the nutplates for the seat ribs. This is where the seats attach.