Most of the time was spent finishing the rear baggage panel which looks fairly nice! I did need to enlarge a few of the holes for the screws because they were slightly off but I didn’t have to do it too much and the screw heads still cover the entire hole with plenty of margin.
I’ll document the rest of my time tonight in another post since it is in regards to another section.
I worked through all of the drilling for the rear baggage panels and the right baggage panel. The rear was the hardest as you were supposed to cleco the panel after each hole but none of the clecos are the right size and I have all of the sizes for small planes! I ended up putting some bolts through to hold it in line which helped for the most part. Either way I got the right baggage panel completely installed. Tomorrow I’ll continue work on the rear baggage panel with getting all of the nut plates drilled and installed.
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.
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.
I didn’t spend too much time today on the build. I feel like I’ve been making so much progress recently I really need to sit down and do proper planning so I don’t seal something up that I need access to. I did at least want to get the conduit run so I did that today. I also got some stuff I knew I needed ordered so that should be here tomorrow or Wednesday. Then I can install the antennas so I know where I need to run the coax and how big of an access panel I need to install as well. I then just really need to sit down and think through everything I will need to run back to the tail and make sure I have plenty of room. I also ordered my large 2AWG wire that will feed power up to the front bus as well as to the starter. I need to order the positive post that will go through the firewall so I can terminate the power wire to that as well as leave the rest terminated there and hanging to where it will connect to the main bus.
