Doing a little bit here and there when I can get myself up early enough to get to the hangar and not die from the heat.
Quite some time ago I tried and failed to install the heel support gussets but with everything else in place it was very obvious how this go. Sorry for the blurry picture.
The forward skin gets riveted to the firewall edge and I came up with my own way of achieving this. First I drew a centre line on the edge, laid out some rivet locations and pilot drilled them.
Then I put the firewall back on the fuselage and used a hole finder to locate the hole positions on the outside skin and drilled.
The alternative would have been to drill from the inside which would have been tricky given the lack of clearance for the drill head (other option is for me to buy an angle drill!).
It worked out better than I expected and I soon had both sides drilled out to size 20.
My replacement forward angles had arrived so I had a stab at those. First I put each l-angle up against a forward angle and drew the curve on the angle which would be my cut line.
With it cut, I clamped the two together and drew a rivet line 10mm from the edge and then eye-measured the rivet locations based on missing the flanges underneath.
Next up was pilot drilling and then expanding holes in the two angles.
And here is the first one installed inside the skin.
I’ve decided that I really want the two halves riveted together so everything from here will be towards that aim. Specifically I need to find some backing plates for my antennas, install them and run cable from the ELT antenna to the ELT location. Once that is done, I can rivet the baggage back in place and then the two halves.
I do have a concern about the seat base fitting. With everything together the gap where the back of the seat base sits is not wide enough, it needs to be pulled out 3 or 4mm. It is easy enough to do this with two people and the base goes in perfectly but I worry why it doesn’t just go in right, and what will happen once the frame is riveted.