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Showing posts from November, 2017

Begin the rear fuselage bottom skin and longerons (more problems!)

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Prepped and built longeron 8, that was pretty easy: And then did the rest: After clecoing things together I found a problem: Note the severe hole misalignment. After much discussions with the factory, it turns out there was ANOTHER manufacturing problem, and the skin is bad. I will be getting a new one!

Ribs 3 and 2 assembly

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I have now assembled the remaining ribs 3 and 2! Rib 3 on the jig: And the finished product: The plans were wrong, but at least the parts all fir together nicely this time. And here is rib 2 finished ... forgot to take some pictures of the process. This one is special in that the top faces one way, and the bottom another. As such the jig is also on one side, and then another, instead of being all on one side. Hard to explain without pictures! The top of the rib didn't line up with the jig for me ... but according to the plans those top holes are maybe not supposed to? Everything else line sup perfectly so for now I'll just move on. The shelf support pieces are missing here, though I did add them later! All done the ribs!

Cleaned up the shop!

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As I was exchanging e-mails with the factory regarding the ribs, I decided to get the workshop ready for the full fuselage build, which is of course a pretty big piece of kit ... after the ribs, we pull out one of the long skins and really start building the tail, so now is the time to do this. so I finally found some storage space for my elevator: And I placed my tables in the right spot to host the full fuselage: Covered them with "under carpet" (To take out slight imperfections in the surface): And then the carpet, to make sure the "belly" of the plane will no scratch up against the table: All set!

Ribs 3 and 2

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So the top of rib 2 doesn't align, due to the flanges not being bent and placed appropriately: And the top of rib 3 does not look like the plans: Which means every. single. rib. had a problem! After some choice words with the factory, it was agreed that: I could cut off the offending flanges in this case (And on other ribs, though I didn't think of it before) My top-of-rib-3 parts are indeed correct, it's the plans that are wrong. So I went ahead and fixed the top of rib 2: And I did all the metal prep work! The parts for these two ribs are "drying" as I type this!