The last thing I had to finish up for the center section was dimpling the bottom skin. I did most of that with the C-frame dimpler. About half way through, the ram in the dimpler just froze and wouldn't slide up and down for some reason. I took it out and cleaned it off, but that didn't change anything. Then it dawned on me - with the radiant heater cranking, the ram itself was heating up, but the metal of the barrel that it slides in (much thicker) was still pretty cold overall. I measured the barrel and ram and found that they are the exact same size, down to .001", so I suppose it doesn't take much heat differential to make the ram expand enough to matter. I turned off the heater and within 5 minutes, everything was working normally again.
I had to place an order for more primer from Aircraft Spruce, but with shipping being what it is, I always try to order at least a few things to take the sting out of it (order enough and the shipping is free). I won't order most avionics until I'm almost ready to install them since those get outdated as fast as personal computers, but for pretty much everything without a computer screen, it doesn't really matter when I get it. Since I've decided to go with a Dynon panel, I ordered the Dynon heated/regulated pitot/AOA (very nice because it measures the temp and only draws enough power to keep the pitot from freezing vs having only an on/off, with the "on" being blistering hot).
It's a little deceptive to see everything laid out, because just about every intersection of stiffeners or brackets has pieces underneath or around them. For example, the center vertical stiffener that joins the diagonal one and the bottom horizontal one has one triangular spacer, plus another full spacer on top of it, followed by one of the large aluminum angles I fabricated a while ago.
I also went ahead and purchased the attach brackets for the pitch and roll servos. If I install the brackets now, the servos can be purchased and installed right at the end of the build. I don't know that much will change with servos between now and then, but as long as I have the brackets in, there's no reason to rush and get the servos just to have them sit.
Now it was time to backtrack! The center section needs to be primed before it can be assembled, but as luck would have it, my big order from Aircraft Spruce got me all of the things I don't need right away, but back ordered the primer. Figures. So the center section is done and ready to assemble once I have the primer. Truth be told, I've seriously messed with the idea of just spraying a little primer on the flanges and mating surfaces of the ribs and calling it a day. I know that's more than adequate to have the plane outlast my lifetime since everything left to build is an internal cockpit part and not exposed to the elements. If the rest of the primer is backordered too long, I may end up just going that route. We'll see. I'm type A enough that I will have a hard time with a 95% primed plane and 5% not, regardless of logic.
Anyway, now that I have most of the backordered parts from Van's, I need to backtrack and work on the firewall. I forgot to get a picture of just the parts, but here's the general idea after some of it has been clecoed together. Van's pre-drills a lot of the stiffeners, which is really nice. I know they could pre-drill everything, but I'm guessing the 51% rule is what keeps them from doing that. They have to leave enough tasks for me to do. The firewall is a very thin (shockingly thin) sheet of stainless steel that has a flange around the entire perimeter for stiffness. It's still a super flimsy thing. It gets covered in stiffeners and brackets. The picture below is far from everything, but it is the starting point for stiffeners. The 4 white powder coated brackets in the corners are steel brackets that the longerons and other things will attach to. The side with all of the stiffeners is the cockpit side.
It's a little deceptive to see everything laid out, because just about every intersection of stiffeners or brackets has pieces underneath or around them. For example, the center vertical stiffener that joins the diagonal one and the bottom horizontal one has one triangular spacer, plus another full spacer on top of it, followed by one of the large aluminum angles I fabricated a while ago.
