Tailcone attachment started

We took the first steps in attaching the tailcone to the fuselage, which means fitting the skins inside each other and clecoing them up (making it look huge!):

Fuselage and tailcone clecoed together (right side)

Fuselage and tailcone clecoed together (left side)

I then match-drilled the longerons and bolted them together:

Mid fuselage longeron volted to tailcone longeron

I fabricated the spacers that go underneath the top tailcone skin - the manual said to use either 0.025" or 0.032" sheet, and I chose 0.025" since that's the thickness of the tailcone skin, which indeed resulted in being very flush with the rest:

Tailcone shim in position

After that, I final-drilled or match-drilled all the skin holes to the undestructure (bulkheads, ribs and the longerons), and countersunk them:

Machine-countersunk mid side skin / mid fuselage longeron holes

Machine-countersunk mid side skin / tailcone side skin holes

With this, the whole thing can come apart again for deburring, primer and dimpling - though I'll hold off on doing that so I can complete some of the match-drilling from the next few sections while these parts are attached and properly aligned.

Time lapse:

Total tailcone attachment rivets: 0
Total tailcone attachment time: 6.4h