Center Fuselage

Fuselage (Center Section)

	28 Dec 04	Started digging out parts to start the center fuselage.
	29 Dec 04	Work really began on the center section and in a day's work, got a lot done. The two center seat ribs get the cutout, as shown here. The next two have the enlarged holes for the stick assy.
		I managed to get all these parts' edges smoothed and de-burred, and all ribs straightened and flutted. There's also the small straps and shims that had to be made. I was makin' some progress today...
		Fitted all this together today since all the parts were ready. I started by clecoing the baggage ribs and seat ribs to the seatback bulkhead first, then the carry-through bulkhead. Seemed to work but tipping it up made clecoing easier for the carry-through bulkhead.
		Even managed to cleco the bottom skin on. Amazing how all these holes line up as well as they do. In one day, this was pretty serious progress.
	30 Dec 04	I was able to get the outboard baggage ribs drilled as well as the end straps for these ribs. The instructions leave it up to you to figure out that you need to trim each end a little. The drawings don't help much either!
	2 Jan 05	What should have taken about an hour ended up taking about three hours. Sheezzz! I had not made the spacers for the 704 bulkhead so it was finally time to do this. With all the pre-punched holes, I'm not really sure about the value of this step. Once the 704 upright end-plates are lined up and the forward bulkhead lines up with the lower center skin, everything is in line. Oh well, did it anyway.
		Once the spacers were in, I match drilled the upright end-plates, and the forward bulkhead to skin. Carolina wandered out and we flipped this thing over. Very cool. The plan is to do as much as possible fitting various components and determining where wiring runs will go.
		Here's the left seatbelt crotch strap anchor being fitted. Pretty easy but nice that this is being done now, rather than later. I plan on using Hooker Harnesses, but I understand the attach anchor fitting may be too thick for the .125 that's allotted by Vans', so I'm trying to see if this needs to be changed.
	3 Jan 05	In the upper center, you can see the trim servo assembly. This took a couple hours but no big deal. Van's provides a nice full-size drawing and an instruction sheet for this. I'd like to go with removable floors so I'm figuring out how this is going to work as well as locating the strobe power supply and servo relays.
	6 Jan 05	I drilled the floor mount holes on the outboard seat ribs after first fluting them to fit the curve of the floor. Plans call for .032 edge distance from floor to outside of the rib so I used a piece of scrap.
		While I had the floors on, drilling commenced. I'm installing the floors with screws so everything is removable. There a A LOT of platenuts to install here!
	8 Jan 05	Earlier in the week I had taken some time to lay out potential routing for aft fuselage wiring so there's sharpie marks all over the floor. The autopilot servo wires need to be segregated from strobe cabling so that complicates things somewhat. Still thinking about this but most wires will run up through the center tunnel. All floor holes are drilled as well as holes for platenuts. The platenut drill jig from Avery worked great and it only took about an hour and a half to drill all of these.
		About the last thing to do before this all comes apart for de-burring and priming is the fitting of the strobe power supply mount. It's located about 3" aft of the 705 bulkhead, one bay from center. The mount itself is just angle cut to fit. One angle on each side which will be prepped for platenuts.
This cell left intentionally blank (No Picture)	10 -16 Jan 05	Not really a lot to show. The entire center section came apart for that enjoyable de-burring and dimpling. Way too many holes to de-burr here. As it stands, I'm paying the Piper for the decision to install removable floors. I think I counted some 110 platenuts just in the seat ribs (11/rib x 10), plus all the ones in the baggage floor. Drilling for the platenuts is the easy part. It's the countersinking that takes the time! Oh well, it's going to be worth the work when I'm done. Still have to drill for some platenuts in the strope power supply mount and open drill for some additional snap bushings on the seat ribs.
	22 Jan 05	After all that prep, finally got to do the painting. Just another shot of parts drying, but this seems to have been one of the bigger batches of parts.
	23 Jan 05	I'm installing the crotch strap anchors so I needed to figure out the best way to install these. Van's sends a bunch of blind rivets but that didn't make much sense since I wasn't retrofitting an existing structure. If you install the seat ribs with the anchors first, there's enough room to get the squeezer in there so you can use solid rivets.
		After a couple hours, I made a little progress. All the seat ribs are riveted to the aft 704 (but I still need to install the bolts. I've also completed about half the 705 install with the ribs. The angle on the right center baggage rib is for the strobe power supply mount. Plan is to install a whole bunch of plate nuts during the week then hopefully get the skin on next weekend.
	28 Jan 05	Been making pretty good progress on all the nutplates. Man..there's bunch. I'm up to my ears in nut plate purgatory but the end is in sight. Right now, the count is about 120, and I'm not quite done. That does include 8 for the crotch strap anchors though...
	28 Jan 05	Most nutplates are done and the baggage ribs and seat ribs are now riveted to the 705 bulkhead. Some of those are really not very fun to rivet. Here's skin all ready for riveting.
		Paul Eastman came over this morning and between the two of us, took only 2 hours to completely rivet the skin to the center section frame. There's still some nutplates to install once I receive a Van's order, then install the stick assembly mounts and seat belt anchors. Getting close to finishing this section!
	31 Jan 05	I was waiting for Vans to ship a replacement DWG 17 so I figured I'd just put in all the AN-3 bolts for the aft spar. Here's all the AN# rear spar-to-rib bolts installed and torqued. The stick attach fittings were also installed and torqued.
		After fitting, I'd do yourself a favor and just remove all the seatbelt anchors. They just get in the way during the rest of the assembly. Once the frame is riveted together with the lower skin, then go ahead and install the anchors. Here, they're all installed and torqued.
	3 Feb 05	This is the strobe power supply mount. I wanted this as far forward as possible but it just wasn't going to fit between the seat ribs.
	12 Feb 05	We'll call this thing done! Installed a couple nut-plates and prepped for mating with aft fuselage.