Time to take all of my hard work apart! I flipped the tailcone over just to make it easier to pull clecos out. My work area looks like a disaster - so many parts laying around. As soon as I get to the point where the central part of the fuselage is ready to join to the tailcone, I'll have to reorganize again, move tables, and break down the crate that I still have parts stored in. Once the fuselage is ready to be joined, it grows quickly and won't fit in the narrow and short space I have it in now.
I had a few odds and ends I had to take care of as well. The aft canopy deck rails that I drilled to the longerons a while ago still needed to be modified since I'm building a tip-up canopy. I laid everything out, checked my measurements about 100 times, then finally made the cuts. I have come to prefer using the pneumatic die grinder with a cutoff wheel for work like this. You have to be careful to not let it get away from you, but I actually find it easier than the bandsaw for cuts like this.
I still hadn't fabricated the tie down bracket for the tail, mostly because the instructions never called it out. I just realized I still needed to do it after looking at the plans. I cut the aluminum blank to shape, drilled and countersunk the holes and match drilled them to the aft bulkhead (only 4 of the holes are countersunk - the others get bolts when the tail is attached), and cut threads for the tie down ring.
There was one oops the other day that I need to figure out a solution for. When the J-stringers were match drilled to the skin, I created an extra hole in one of the flange tabs of the 710 bulkhead. The design of this is such that I'm kind of surprised I only messed up once. The skin has a pre-punched hole, then behind the skin sits the blank stringer (no holes), then behind the stringer sits the bulkhead flange with a pre-punched hole. So there is no way to accurately line up the two pre-punched holes since there is a solid piece of aluminum between them. In hindsight, I should have taken the stringer out, bent the tab as best as I could to line up the hole with the skin hole, then put the stringer back in place and drilled the hole. I didn't realize the tab had a hole already until it was too late though (a lot of the other bulkhead tabs don't have holes in them to allow you to simply drill your own wherever it needs to land). I emailed Van's to ask what I should do. I'm guessing they'll have me just back the tab up with another piece of aluminum that is riveted to the bulkhead web - basically sandwiching the tab with the two holes. I also asked them why in the world they pre-punched a hole in the tab instead of just leaving it blank so it could be drilled to the skin without having to blindly hope the holes were lined up.
