Wings

Fuselage (Bulkheads)

	13 Sept 04	Finally received the fuselage kit! Delivered via Fed Ex Freight and everything turned out well. No dings in the box. Driver had a pallet jack and a lift gate so by the time I could write the check for $87 (freight fee), the box was off the truck and in the garage. Man, Van's sure packs a lot of stuff into one big box!
	19 Sept 04	Here's a couple pics of the box with everything there. Once you remove the aft side skins, there's just sub-kit after sub-kit. The pic below is the hardware bag. Jeeeze, there's a ton of hardware. I wish Van's would just pack one bag for each hardware type. You find several bags with the same rivets, other bags with the same AN-3-x bolts, etc. I'm not sure that packing hardware by use, i.e. all the hardware for a particular plans step is located together. I start by sorting the rivets into appropriate bins, then do the same with the other hardware. When the plans call for a specific, washer, just go to the bin and pick out the right part. Also, why not just list kit components in order. You spend more time looking through that stupid inventory list than putting parts away! Oh well, I'm a computer geek by trade so these things just irritate me a bit.
	20 Sept 04	This went together quick. Out of the box, just cleco together. Now for the drilling and fabricating of parts.
	22 Sept 04	More fitting of the lower floor brackets. Not too bad and a bandsaw really helps.
	25 Sept 04	Fitting the lower floor brackets. Everything seemed to fit well. After this, everything came apart for dimpling and countersinking.
	30 Sept 04	Finished the dimpling on the firewall. Major duffus move earlier though. I had dimpled the perimeter #30 rivet holes from the wrong side. Just was one of those days. An e-mail to Van's said just to re-dimple from the correct direction. There's some surface deformity but we'll see how everything looks when riveted.
	2 Oct 04	Prepped all the firewall parts and primed. I'm still using the DP-48LF from PPG. The finish is very nice and it still seems to hole up very well.
	6 Oct 04	Another duffus move. Note that the 5/8" electrical conduit hole in the wrong place. Per note from, Van's, I just need to put another hole in the correct.
	9 Oct 04	Making more progress on the firewall. Whoo-hooo. Not much more to do and this is done! Well, except for the oil filter recess, and a couple holes for cables and wiring.
	10 Oct 04	Positioned the outboard uprights and used all 4 of the close tolerance bolts. Plans say to use just one on the top and one on the bottom. Can't hurt to use all four.
	11 Oct 04	Got a lot done today. Had the day off from work and the boy had school. Quality building time after flying the biplane for a little this morning. Finally finished the firewall. After driving a bunch of AD4 rivets, when you get to an AD3, it soooo easy to really smash a couple.
		Per plan for the day, I succeeded in pretty much completing the 704 bulkheads. Almost everything but fitting the stick. Here's the front view with thing going together. Pretty straight forward and only one massively-smiled AD4 rivet that needed to be removed.
		Complete except for the stick assembly. Nutplates are installed and I'll probaby spend a little time temp fitting the stick assy before disassembling the bulkhead.
	16 Oct 04	Making forward progress and that's a good thing. Had some nasty weather out at the airport so I took the opportunity to make some decent progress on the 705 bulkhead parts. Lots of pieces to fabricate but nothing too difficult. A bandsaw really helps.
		Just part of the day's progress. Pretty much had the rear wing spar carry through straps drilled. For the most part it was straight forward. I did drill the 3/16" holes in the spacer blocks with the drill press. Actually, most of the 3/16" holes in this .125 bar were drilled with the drill press. Drill slightly undersize, then ream with flutting reamer. Makes nice round holes.
	18 Oct 04	Hummmm, Van's has go tto do something about the shape of those seat belt attach fittings.
	20 Oct 04	Here's the drilling for the tip-up angle the re-enforces the 705 bulkhead. The only tricky part was cutting the slot but even that turned out OK.
	23 Oct 04	Almost done fitting the 705 bulkhead. Had to head out to the local airport to borrow a friends brake. I had a small sheet metal brake but it just didn't do a decent job on the .040 sheet. Oh well. Van's was good enough to sell me a $6. Well, that an $4 handling, and the 2-day shipping. Sure, parts are cheap. It's the rest of nickel and dimes kill you.
		Here's fitting the seat back angle. There's some aluminum angle that's .125 thick so it makes a nice spacer for the 1/8" space between the angle and the top of the cross piece.
		Pretty much done. Now on to deburr, smooth edges, and prep for priming.
	27 Oct 04	Bulkhead 705 is complete as it's going to get for now. I have to wait until the mid-section seat bottom ribs are fitted in place so I can trim the ears on the seat belt anchor fittings. It's useless to bolt and torque these now. Also, note the arrow. After riveting the two doublers on, and even got teh rivet under the doubler, I realized that the two end uprights needed to be in place. Dohhhh!
		Another duffus move. These six rivets had to be drilled out. I had marked them fine, but on the opposite side. Need to really pay attention to the drawings for the fuselage as the written instructions don't tell you much. Any how, on the the rest of the bulkheads.
	8 Nov 04	Finally got around to updating the web. Good part is that progress has been made...Here's the 706/707 bulkheads and appropriate ribs cleco'd together for the obligatory drilling. At least it looks like progress
		The intersection of the 706 bulkhead and the components for the elevator bellcrank. Not too complicated but it does take some time. I also found that the stamped parts for the 706 bulkhead were pretty warped. Takes a bit of finesse to straighten them and even then, there's still waves. We'll see how this goes...
		More bulkhead parts. Again, not too complicated, but these thing take time.
	17 Nov 04	Here's the whole stack of aft fuselage parts ready for the alumaprep and prime thing. These have all been de-burred and edges smoothed.
	19 Nov 04	Yup, the aluminum forest. Parts ready for priming.
	21 Oct 04	Took about two hours to complete the rest of the assembly but here they are. I'll probably regret it but I missed the part in the instructions that says wait and rivet the angle to the 728 rib until later. I did leave it cleco'd to the 706 bulkhead but did rivet the angle to the rib. Oh well... I'm not going to drill out the rivets yet. For the most part the bulkheads are done! On to the bending of the longerons...