The riveting of the side skins continues through today! Not only are there a metric crap-ton of rivets in this section, but many of these rivets are extremely difficult to reach from the inside. I did as many as I could by myself before recruiting Sarah for the task of climbing into the airplane and bucking the ones I absolutely could not reach myself. Laying down flat on her stomach over the front seat area and riveting the lower fwd fuselage channels, we realized hearing protection was not optional here. We had the idea to grab our David Clark headsets and a portable intercom system I had so we could have hearing protection and talk to each other. It's nerdy as hell, but it worked amazingly!
Sarah's workstation inside the plane (right) and my workstation under the front side of the plane (left), connected by headsets and an intercom!
It was pretty hot today (got up into the 90's) and even with two fans going full-blast we took a number of breaks to cool off, rehydrate and stretch out. By the time we called it a night though, we had basically finished riveting the left side of the fuselage! The right side still needs to be done, except for the rivets we had done yesterday around the center section bulkhead. That's a task for another day!
