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I drilled the last of the fuselage skins yesterday, and have started working on the landing gear boxes. I'm going on the road for a week or so starting 27 Jan 00, so things will stop.

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I just about finished drilling the aft side skins on 18 Jan, then went on the road for a couple of days. I've got about 80 holes to do behind the cockpit area, and I will be done with drilling the skins.

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The F-824 aft side skins are drilled and clecoed on now. I drilled the tail spring mount, and fabricated the rear seat belt attachments.

I did have to move the F-811 and F-812 bulkheads aft slightly to get them to line up nicely with the prepunched holes in the skin. That meant I had to enlarge a notch in the F-887 longeron where it interfered with the F-811. I wish I had put the skins up along side the bulkheads before making that notch, so I could have got them in the right place the first time, as it was a real pain in the butt to extend it - I would have had to disassemble the whole fuselage to extract the longerons, so I had to do the work in place.

I also had a bit of frustration with the mid aft longerons. It turned out that I had cut up one of the pieces of angle that I should have been saving for this part. I managed to borrow a piece of angle from another builder, so it wasn't a major hold up.

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This view gives a good idea how far I've got in drilling the fuselage skins. This part of the project gives the feeling of making quick progress. I'm finding it very satisfying to see the fuselage taking shape.

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The F-823 Centre Side Skins were next on the agenda. They go from the main wing spar area, to the back end of the cockpit. The aft, bottom edge (top edge in the jig) has to be curled to fit around the curved corner of the fuselage.

The right side skin is all drilled. The left side is about 5% done. Next I've got to fit some small bulkheads in the cockpit area, and manufacture the mounting points for the passenger seat belt.

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I started drilling the fuselage skins on 3 Jan 00. The first skin (F-822 forward cockpit floor) went well, but I couldn't get the right F-820 forward side skins to line up the way they should. I was having a tough time holding the thick, flat skin in place on the curved fuselage, so I decided to put a small curl in the skin to make it easier to hold in place. Well, I had a pretty nice curve, but I got greedy and tried to tweak it a bit too much. I slipped and put a crease in the skin :-(

I've got to order another skin. Fortunately, another local builder has his fuselage kit, although he is still in the early stages of his wing kit. He has graciously offered to give me a part from his kit which I will replace once my new one comes from Van's. Thanks Mark!

I finally woke up and realized that there had to be a reason why the side skin wasn't fitting the way it should. I checked everything again and found that I had screwed up the way the firewall was mounted in the jig. It was tipped forward 1/8 inch at the bottom (top in the jig). It turns out that I had an earlier 1/16 error, which I had detected and "corrected", but I applied the correction in the wrong direction, and never went back to check it again, because I had already "corrected" it. Moral of the story is check and recheck, and check again. And, if something doesn't fit, there must be a reason.

Drilling the forward side skins went well, after I got the firewall nicely vertical.

Here we see forward floor, and the left forward side skins (remember that the fuselage is built upside down).