Rear Seats - ELT Mount

Finished all the prep work for the rear seats today! Started by trimming and drilling the upper F-637C braces that nest inside the upper edge of the seat backs. This was pretty much the trickiest part of the whole section, although it really wasn't that bad. The vertex of the pieces need to be rounded in order to properly nest inside the seat back. I figured out a way to do this by carefully holding the piece up against the fence on the bandsaw at a 45-degree angle (so both flanges are in contact with the fence), which presents the vertex to the bandsaw blade at the perfect angle to neatly trim it off. You have to be careful to set the fence in the perfect position so just the right amount gets trimmed away, otherwise you'll end up with two separate flanges and a frown.

The vertex of the aluminum angle being fed into the bandsaw

View from above

The trimmed vertex, after a bit of cleanup on the belt sander

After drilling and clecoing, I was able to place both rear seats into position for a photo shoot:

The back seat frames!

Rear seats with custom 60/40 bench modification (center piece not yet trimmed)

Closeup of the 1/4" gap between the two halves

I had previously marked a cut line for the center F-637A seat back panel so that it doesn't overlap so much of the left side panel. Once everything came back apart, I made the cut and deburred all the parts. This was the first real deburring session in a while, it felt... great.

Finalized rear seat back parts, after deburring, ready for primer!

Next, I got to work on the ELT mount. I had previously made a mounting tray while building the empennage kit out of 0.040" aluminum sheet that was bent using my home made brake to go between two of the stringers in the tail cone, directly to the right of the battery location. Although I like the location, I didn't like the quality of the tray I made. I felt like I could do better with two pieces of aluminum angle and a flat (not bent) piece of aluminum sheet. So, I took a few measurements and got to work on "v2.0" of the ELT mount. It came out pretty good, I'm very happy with it, although I don't have any pics of it yet. I think I primer session is in our future pretty soon, and we'll be able to have a number of parts ready to rivet and final-install into position.

My fuel fittings should be here sometime this week, and we'll be able to get back to business on sections 36/37!