I can’t do anything about joining the two parts of the fuselage permanently until I can route some coaxial from the ELT antenna, and I can’t do that until I, well, buy some. So today (with the help of a passer by) I reassembled the rear fuselage and clecoed the two halves together.
While looking more closely at what to do next I determined that the firewall was not centred on the bottom skin, and it was out enough that I wanted to fix it. So using some clamps I pushed it a little bit forward and moved it left (or was it right) so that it was about even. I drilled new holes and expanded them to the full size.
Just for kicks I put the gear strut fittings in their gap between the two fuse parts. Made me feel like I was “real close” to putting the main gear on.
There is a lot of work to do before it is installed but the pleasing thing was that it went just nice. Also in the category of “so close to the wheels going on”, I clecoed and drilled the nose gear lower bearing to the firewall and bottom skin.
I enlarged the holes in the cabin frame.
and
(yes, I had planned to have riveted that A6 rivet line by now but I am putting that off).
There are two cabin frame gussets that come with a predrilled hole, we have to extend a rivet line on both sides and pre-drill some pilot holes.
They go between the cabin frame and the forward fuselage. I was able to drill many of the holes with the piece in place but the two closest to the bend will have to be drilled with the cabin frame outside of the assembly.
And that was that for today. Daytime temps are now over 100 every day for the summer so hangar time will be an hour or two stolen in the early mornings. I’m hoping that I don’t stop completely but it will be a very slow build for the next 4 or 5 months.