Fuse Bottom Skins - Fuse Side Skins Begin

Started another marathon part of the build tonight: the 22-page long Section 29 - Fuse Side Skins! Didn't get too terribly far though, really just maybe about halfway through the first page of the plans. The first several pages appear to be pretty heavy on metalworking, including bending some longerons into shape from raw aluminum angle pieces, as well as rolling some skins into the desired shapes. Other than some pretty minor bending/rolling that occurred during tailcone construction last year, this will be basically the first time we do these types of activities, and there will certainly be a learning curve here to figure out how to make these bends correctly.

The first part of this section involves bending the F-1046-L/R longerons to match the curve of a template provided in the kit. The idea is to put the aluminum angle into a vise, preload it with one hand and strike it with a rubber mallet with the other hand. Doing this many times along the length of the longeron is supposed to create a smooth bend that should match the curve of the template. It took some practice to get the forces correct and figure out which areas needed more or less bending to get it to match, but by the end of this process I think I have a method figured out. I'll probably want to go back to the F-1046-R longeron (the first of the two that I worked on) and give it a once-over again... it's close to correct but I think I can do better. It's a somewhat tedious process that requires a lot of patience!

Sarah had some free time tonight too, so we were able to get started on riveting the parts of the bottom skins that required two people. In order to reach the top side of the rivets with the back-riveting gun, she had to climb into the airplane, which in itself is a pretty cool milestone. This made for really the only photo-op of the evening:

The first human to sit inside the fuselage!

After a quick session of back-riveting, we got about halfway through them all. We started with the most difficult-to-reach ones though, so hopefully the second half goes smoothly tomorrow (or whenever we can get back to it).

That's pretty much it for today, didn't get too far with Section 29 yet but I'm sure that will change in the coming days. Also can't wait for OSH15!