The final section of the fuselage: yay! Here I am assembling and attaching the roll over structure. This structure will also be the dividing point between the aft canopy section and the forward canopy section. First, it was the usual gathering of parts (none left after this), deburring, cleco’ing, and uncleco’ing, and deburring, and then […]

Section 36 involves installing the elevator push rods as well as the control sticks. I am not installing the Aft Elevator Pushrod at this time mainly because the elevator is not installed yet. That will happen at a much later date. The first steps involved preparing the bellcranks acting as a pivot point for the […]

Section 35 was an interesting section because it allowed me to see the eventual shape of the cockpit area including the instrument panel placement. The usual process of selecting, separating, and deburring the parts was next. However, this time it also included painting any part that will be visible from the cockpit area. As I […]

This was a relatively quick section which entailed installing the Flap Actuation system including the torque arms, motor, and the Flap Position Sensor. The torque tube is position directly underneath the seats.

The hours spent on this included the painting I showed in Section 32. I started this section by having the rudder pedal parts powder coated red. I think it will look pretty cool with the white rudder bars and the black floor and side panels. You might notice some paint spray on the firewall. I […]

It has been a while since I posted an update. Many things got in the way of completing this including a vacation, a weekend away for an EAA Electrical Class, and the big winter freeze of 2021. This section also took a while simply because some of the rivets required me to climb into the […]

Here we are installing the fairly vital and important fuel lines inside the fuselage. I opted to buy the fuel tubing lines pre-bent and flared from Aircraft Specialty. I think it was money well spent because the lines aligned perfectly and saved several hours of fabricating the tubing myself. Also installed here was the fuel […]

This one takes the cake for the most fun and most “it looks like an airplane is being built” step so far. Basically, the section consisted of attaching the rear empennage, built well over a year ago, to the forward section of the fuselage just completed. I had a pilot buddy help with this because […]

Wow! This was a big one. Lots of detailed work and lots and lots of rivets. This section mostly consisted of attaching the two side skins to the forward fuselage section. At the conclusion of this section, I believe I am over 80% complete with the riveting, and no more big skins to dimple. This […]

This section mainly concerned itself with the floor of the fuselage near the firewall. It first consisted of dimpling skins (of course). Some skin stiffeners were also added by back riveting. Stainless steel sections were put in between the two bottom skins. These immediately surround the muffler and exhaust which exits the rear of the […]