Damazio family's RV-10 project: section44

There's a bit of fabrication in section 44 before actually attaching the wings, so even though I'm not in the hangar yet, I got started with that.

I final-drilled the wing root fairing stiffeners:

Wing root fairings with stiffeners attached

and also fluted the fairing supports into the right curve, then final-drilled them:

Wing root fairing supports

I had hoped to use the TCW tech fittings for the fuel line exit hole, but detected that it'll cause interference with the lower wing fairing root support, so another solution will be needed (which may mean trimming both the fitting and the root support a bit):

Interference between TcW tech machined fitting and lower wing fairing root support

I also trimmed the flap pushrods to the desired length, but that takes some tuning after the wings are on, so I can't finish it yet.

With this, the rest of the section has to wait until I'm ready to attach the wings, much later.

Time lapse:

Total wing attachment time: 4.5h

Finally coming back to this section and making progress!

I took a step from section 44, and drilled the mid fuselage skin nutplate holes to size - the goal is to attach the two forward-most nutplates before riveting the skin on, since they're in somewhat tight spots after the skin is installed. The others should be easy to squeeze rivets for later:

We finally primed the bottom skins:

then proceeded to remove the vynil from both for riveting:

We then dimpled the skins, and next will start riveting them on.

Unfortunately in that batch of primer I forgot to include the TAS antenna doubler, which is way easier to rivet on before the skin is in place (because the heat tee goes over it), so I'll do that batch before continuing with this section.

Also related to the TAS antenna, I was thinking of cable paths for it, and wondering if I could put the TAS in the tailcone and run the 4 cables straight back (so exiting the tunnel to the right, then going through the rear spar bulkhead. The main question I had was about drilling a big (1/2" or so) hole through the rear spar bulkhead, so I contacted Van's support and send them this annotated picture, and they confirmed it's OK to do so: