Upper Forward Fuse - Baggage Area

Yesterday I had a brief session in the factory to remake the F-1044B angle that I had mis-drilled last time. I actually ended up doing this twice, because I messed up my first remake. Third try was the charm though, and so now in addition to the usable part I have two 17-5/16" long pieces of aluminum angle that I'm 100% certain will get put to good use on some future part of the plans. Not ideal, but oh well that's the way it goes sometimes. At least I didn't have to reorder any parts I suppose.

One other bit of news from yesterday, I called Van's to place my order for the finish kit! They are quoting an 8-week lead time, and although I'm pretty sure I won't be *done* with the fuselage in 8 weeks, it will be nice to have some of the parts contained in that kit a little ahead of time. I have a few weeks now to finalize a "delete" list and send in to them. I'll cover this in a future post.

In the meantime though, tonight it was time to start on the task of deburring all the upper forward fuse parts. It actually went pretty quick using the EZ-Burrs on all the drilled holes and the belt sander for all corners and edges. I started dimpling a few of the smaller parts, but got bored of it and started thinking about how I won't really be able to get too much further with all these parts until I figure out my panel layout a little better. So, I tossed the pile of parts back into the shelf and will continue with that as we get closer to section 41 where it all actually has to be attached permanently (Section 31 is sort of designed to be an "at your own pace" section and allows you to slowly put your panel together outside of the airframe and then attach the whole works in section 41).

Shifting gears to Section 33 then (remember 32 is tailcone attach, complete!), we began work on the rear seat and baggage floor areas. I won't be able to final-install the floors yet before we get the steps back from powdercoating and I finalize my antenna layout, putting any necessary doublers under the back seats... but that won't stop us from prepping all the parts!

Derek came over tonight to help out, and we had a mega-productive session match- and final- drilling the floor covers. We started off with the back seat floors and moved aft to the baggage floors per the plans, which included cutting some AN257-P3 hinges to size and match-drilling them to the panels. The hinges will be used to attach the rear seatbacks to the airplane, and allow for removal by simply pulling the pins out. I took charge of the L side of the airplane, and Derek took the R side (Sarah took a "supervisory" role tonight). With two drills and two cleco pliers going, we made quick work of it all!

The back seat floor covers after match-drilling

The L baggage floor cover with hinge clecoed into place

Derek match-drilling the hinge to the R baggage floor cover

We finished the night off by making the F-1022 B-G stiffeners and final-drilling them to the R and L baggage floor skins. Derek did an awesome job cutting all 12 pieces from the two provided long aluminum angles using the bandsaw and belt sander to clean them up! While he was doing that, I went ahead and deburred all #30 holes in the four floor panels, leaving only the #40 and #19 holes to finish up.

Great night of productivity! It really feels like things are kicking into high gear, and I can't wait for this thing to be ready to fly!! Gotta keep my excitement in check though, still got quite a ways to go... it's hard to imagine that we're really only about halfway done at this point... probably not even half!