Saturday, August 27, 2016

Section: 30
Hours: 5

Today was a red letter day- I mated the forward fuselage to the tail cone assembly!

First I had to make room in the garage, which involved moving a lot of stuff and measuring frequently with the tape measure. Woody enthusiastically helped me with the tape measure.

The technique illustrated in the manual worked out well for getting the two assemblies together with the skins overlapped properly. I had to make a quick trip over to Lowes to pick up a couple more saw horses. You start out with the tail cone tilted up, shove it in until the bottom skins mate against the baggage ribs. Then you cleco the bottom skins in a couple places in the center. Then you carefully tilt the tail cone up and make sure the skins and longerons are in the proper place. I was able to accomplish all this by myself. I got the saw horses set up the the approximate correct heights and then used wood blocks under the back of the tail cone to gradually lift it up into position.

When everything matches up, you cleco the skins to the longerons. The hardest part of the process was figuring out how to fit this in the garage and still have room for working.

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