Finished Section 42 tonight! Yikes, running out of things do to in the fuselage kit short of the Cabin Cover. Got some time in over lunch today for a quick priming session. Primed the components for the rear seats, the elevator control rods, and the ELT mount that I had fabricated the other day. Got back to it after work and was able to rivet the rear seats together in fairly short order. Unfortunately Sarah had to proctor a pilot exam at the airport so I was flying solo tonight, so to speak. Derek came over for a bit to watch the excitement though, and before long both rear seats were set into position!
Custom 60/40 Rear seats, riveted together and laid into place
Right "40" seat leaned forward to show split
The whole assembly took about an hour, maybe less, to rivet together... awesome! Getting good at this riveting stuff, now that we're getting close to being done with most of the rivets on this plane. Oh well. Next thing to do was rivet together the ELT mount, which looks like this:
ELT mount riveted together
It's a fairly simple part made out of 0.063" aluminum sheet, two angle aluminum pieces to mate up with the stringers in the tailcone, and a short piece of J-channel going vertically between the angles. I'm not sure if I needed to use aluminum as thick as 063 but I had been dabbling with that thickness for the panel, had some scrap handy and figured why not. I think I could have probably used 032 and an extra J-channel instead, and saved a fraction of an ounce or something in weight. I would like the ELT to be mounted as securely as possible though, not only for obvious reasons, but also if we want to follow DO-204 compliance standards, taken from paragraph 3.1.8:
"The mounts shall have a maximum static local deflection no greater than 2.5 mm (0.1 in) when a force of 450 Newtons (100 lbf) is applied to the mount in the most flexible direction. Deflection measurements shall be made with reference to another part of the airframe not less than 0.3 m (one foot) or more than 1.0 m (three feet) from the mounting location."
I'm not sure if I've heard of anyone ever actually test this, but the point is we want it to be as solid as possible. I believe that this part should easily satisfy this requirement. Anyway, that was pretty much it for tonight... I have tomorrow off from work so hoping if all goes well it will be a big day in the factory to make some good progress!!!
