I got the baggage bulkhead channel installed on the bottom half as they requested. The upper half will happen much later when I get the canopy installed. That took a surprising amount of time due to the difficulty of removing the elevator pushrod assembly. I also got the rear baggage panel setup for me and the upper skin clecoed to start drilling matching holes in the rear bulkhead panel and the bulkhead itself.
I had to do some prep work before putting the baggage floors down first. I pulled up the fuel transducer bracket that we riveted in yesterday because I totally forgot to put nutplates in it for the FT-60 LOL Got that done and put it back in. Then Andrew and I riveted in the comm antenna doublers and nut plates. I then mounted the antenna’s to make sure they fit right and I terminated some coax and ran it in to them through on of the conduits I had run previously. I then ran the 2AWG wire that I had ordered and made sure to mount it so it wouldn’t move around. With all of the wires that wouldn’t go through the conduit or that had equipment in that area, I started riveting in the floors. It took quite a bit but I got the entire rear baggage floor done as well as the baggage door opening.
It took way longer than I expected to make two doublers but I wanted these things to be super accurate looking. This then took alot of time measuring and drawing lines for every single rivet hole. The drill press made fairly quick work of getting the holes in the first one. I then used the first one as a template for the second and drilled through it into the second doubler. It worked out pretty well I feel! I had my son help me with the dimpling since I had to use the close quarters dimpler, but he is off at work now so I couldn’t rivet them on today. I’ll get them first thing tomorrow morning and then I can run the coax into that area and I will be good to seal up this area. I can always come back after the fact and add the access holes into the floor.
Some other work that I accomplished was getting the rest of the dimpling/countersinking done and I primed the parts for the rear baggage area. BTW: I had this praying mantis as a companion while I was working LOL
The shop is in disarray right now as I’m tired LOL Somedays I don’t cleanup after myself. Everything is drilled and I am almost done with dimpling. Some of these are going to be super difficult to dimple. There’s some holes that need to be dimpled that are completely inaccessible to the backside of a dimple die. I have a close quarters dimple die but it is for a #40 hole, not a #30. I’m going to look up tonight online how people dimpled those holes as I’m pretty clueless.
I got most of my items from Aircraft Spruce in today so I was able to put the two screws in the rear adel clamps in the very end of the tail to hold the sheaths for the rudder cables. That was a huge pain in the rear to get those adel clamps to stay shut while putting the screw in. Either way that is done. I am not impressed through with how UPS handled the antennas. Below is a picture of how they showed up. Luckily they do not appear to be damaged or bent, but both antennas were protruding from their boxes. Crazy…. Amazing how people don’t care about how things are treated.
This was fairly straight forward but there were two spots I got hung up on. First was the throttle quadrant bracket (which it didn’t dawn on me the words they had used at the time as I wanted a throttle cable version, but something new to learn anyways). There is a different bracket for the throttle quadrant vs the throttle control cables. The version installed on mine is the throttle control bracket instead of the throttle quadrant. I am still planning on doing the throttle control cables but even if I choose to do the throttle quadrant it will end up down in the console so I wouldn’t use that bracket anyways. Either way that was my first hiccup as it didn’t match the digital plans I had downloaded.
Second was there was a missing hole in the firewall. After reading it thoroughly to understand the purpose of the hole, it was so that you could install the upper forward fuselage assembly and match drill one of the angle brackets inside. Mine was already match drilled so I left that hole out.
Everything else was good from the QB facility.
Edit: I just realized that the Q in section 31 and 41 does not stand for Quickbuild, but it stands for quadrant. So that is why I was seeing different instructions in 31 as I was looking at 31Q on the digital but I had turned to 31 in my physical manual
Everything minus the seat pan covers and riveting on the Flo-scan mount bracket were done. Andrew and I set the rivets for the Flo-scan bracket just now and I’ll work on the seat panel covers tonight just so they are ready. I need to get them prepped anyways so that I can prime a bunch of parts. I have the access panels for the wings that need their inside primed, as well as some of the rudder components that needs to be done.
Edit: I just went through the instructions for the seat pan panels and they are ready to go. I just need to prime them which I’ll do that with a bunch of other parts either tonight or tomorrow.
There were only a few things I had to do with this when I got it but I’ve already logged these. They had some snap bushings for the brake lines running through the rudder pedal support bracket that were missing and also the vent selector boxes were not bolted on so I did that. The only thing I still need to do from this is to proseal around the vent selector boxes but I’ll do that when I have more items I need to proseal.
I decided I’m going to log each section that was to be done by the QB team just so I have it documented that I reviewed each step. Luckily this section was fairly easy to review still. So there will be a post for each section coming up shortly as I go back through it and review what was done.
I got the parts I needed 3D printed from Allan Glen’s website. I printed them in polycarbonate which felt really rigid. I installed them and got the conducting run and trimmed. My antennas will be arriving tomorrow as well as the coax cabling which will complete everything I will be installing under the baggage and rear seats area. I can then install the floors and I will install some access panels down the road. I’m still trying to find one that will fit that area. I guess I should pull out the unused access panels down I got with my wing kit that was to be used for the stall warning system they sent which I replaced with the Garmin AOA pitot. I’m excited to get those antennas installed and the floors completed as that has been holding up my progress some.
