Started center fuselage

July 19, 2014 – Another glorious July day. Started on the assembly of the center fuselage.

I started by making the four F916C spacers.

Four of the seat ribs have to be modified to allow for the control stick installation and movement. Didn’t have a 1 1/2″ drill, so I got creative. I started by taking the pilot hole up to 7/8″ and cutting that part out.

I used a 1″ rotary file to cut to the line, then just smoothed it out.

Here you can see before and after:

Two of those four ribs get a section cut out to allow for the installation of the sticks. I just drew the cut lines per the plans, then cut and cleaned those edges.

Small brackets are supplied that will serve to close this gap when installed.

Once these ribs were made, I moved on to clecoing them in place. I got the F-704 and F-705 bulkheads out of storage, and started attaching the seat ribs to the wing spar. You have to make sure the correct ribs are in the correct locations.

Then I got the baggage compartment ribs, and clecoed them to the F-705 aft spar bulkhead. The fun started when I clecoed all of this together.

The center four ribs (the modified ones) also get the four spacers that I made at the top of this post. There is a gap there because of the lack of the double strap that exists on the outboard ends of the one strap you can see there:

The two center spacers were a little harder to get into place because they went up against the edge of the seat belt anchors. I had to make minor adjustments to the sizes to get them to fit correctly.