Rear Fuselage Final Assembly (8.5h)

Today was the absolute last day to work on the plane with my Dad’s help and I knew he really wanted to see it finished. I thought we could do it, he didn’t think so but we would give it a go.

The observant among you may be wondering why the top skin doesn’t get any stiffeners like the other skins. Well, it does, and so that was task one today. Here are the l-angles clecoed ready for riveting.

and riveted.

We riveted the l-angles to the tops of the HT Frames.

By this time we had spent three hours working and I had lost hope that we could get it all finished as we still had to deburr all the remaining longerons, every hole in the skins. Ugh, so much deburring. But it has to be done so we set to it and after I don’t know how long it was all ready for reassembly and riveting.

A previous reassembly had been a nightmare trying to get the l-angles inside the longerons but something was smiling on us because we got all four sides together in record time, only being stumped briefly by having the side channel at the front overlapping the longeron rather than inside (we couldn’t get the top channel in place because of it).

It was getting dark (and cold) fast so we moved everything around the hangar so that we could get the assembly underneath the newly installed fluorescent lighting (thanks to my brother and sister in law for the Christmas gift) and keep going. Without that light there is no way we would have finished, it was pitch black everywhere else by the time we were done.

Anyway, we got to riveting, starting at the rear and the bottom working our way along. The plans, and the video, lay out “no rivet” zones so I had marked those first, including adding some extra places where I wasn’t sure I would need to keep empty. I don’t doubt I missed some and will have to take some rivets out but hopefully that will be a minimum.

Riveting went fast with us both putting in rivets, me riveting while Dad took out clecos and put in rivets behind me, I don’t think two people could go any faster than we did. After getting both sides riveted my Dad figured we were done but we could still see by the light and I could still feel my fingers (just) so I said we should do the top too and he could go home saying we had finished.

Strictly speaking we didn’t quite finish as you can see from this picture that we didn’t rivet the top doublers but whatever, a tiny insignificant detail.

And here’s a victory shot of me with the completed rear fuselage.

It’s really quite amazing that we could put this together in the time we had. It took a recorded 39.5 hours which is almost half the hours I did each of the last two years so it goes to show how much better it is when you work more (duh). From here, it will get interesting as we start to add control tubings etc and of course join the front fuselage to the rear.

Have to give a very big thanks to my Dad for helping me out and working so hard with me, and also to my wife for allowing me so much time in the hangar when we should have been enjoying time together.