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Mated forward and mid fuselage assemblies |
To do that, we first attached the center section bulkheads with the appropriate spacers (later the wings attach at this location) and some huge (AN9) bolts:
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Center section bulkheads attached and torqued |
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AN9 bolts that attach the fuselage parts (and later the wings) |
Thanks to a hint from the interwebz, I knew that I had to rivet the one nutplate from section 44 that goes inbetween the center section bulkheads. Once the whole thing was assembled, it was clear why - it's very very hard to get to later:
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Impossible nutplate (if I hadn't done it now...) |
We then started riveting the skins and bulkheads together, with one of us on the floor and the other bucking from the top. This included some pretty tricky rivets, like this one:
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Very hard-to-reach hole that we needed to buck a rivet in |
We had to use an indirect riveting technique to buck those (there were 6 of them):
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Indirect riveting setup for bucking the rivet |
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Resulting rivet |
With that, we finished riveting the center section bulkheads to the skins:
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Forward center section bulkhead flange fully riveted |
For the double-flush rivets that sit underneath the landing gear mount, we had to use a shorter rivet than Van's indicates (-3.5 instead of -4), but then they sat almost perfectly flush:
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Double-flush rivets in forward center section bulkhead |
With that done, I bolted and torqued all the seat assembly parts together:
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Forward fuselage assembly bolted and torqued |
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Forward fuselage assembly bolted and torqued |
I then clecoed the center section side plates in place (which was a small challenge in terms of alignment):
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Assembled bottom fuselage (not yet fully riveted) |
Only that part of the riveting remains to be done, along with some fitting/drilling of the landing gear mount. Like I mentioned before, I'm not finishing the parts that aren't used soon (like the seat floors), and instead leaving those for when they're needed.
Time lapse:
Total forward fuselage ribs and bottom skins rivets: 722
Total forward fuselage ribs and bottom skins time: 113.9h
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