I'm not sure what date to record this item under - it includes info from several different months, but it makes sense to record it in sequence with the fuselage jig.

Gotcha's

1. F-887 Upper Longeron - I found that I had to move the F-811 & F-812 bulkheads aft later because they didn't match up with the holes in the F-824 Aft Side Skins. This meant that I had to extend the notches in the F-887 Upper Longerons where they interfere with the F-811. This was a royal pain in the butt, as it would have been a lot of work to extract the longerons from the jig at that point.

I advise you to hold off making the notches in the longerons until you can hold the F-824 up along side the aft fuselage to confirm the location of the F-811 & F-812.

2. F-804H - The F-804H is the 0.063 plate that joins the two halves of the F-804 bulkhead. It butts up against the bottom of the F-887 Upper Longeron. One of my F-804Hs was perhaps a bit too long, and was very tight against the longeron. At some point during the fuselage assembly, the upper edge of the F-804H slipped outboard, allowing the F-887 to move very slightly down, and the top edge of the F-804H was caught on the corner of the F-887. Once the edges were caught, it was not possible to slip the F-804H back into the correct position, and it pushed the F-820 and F-823 skins outboard. I didn't discover the problem until I was fitting the canopy. I had to remove a bunch of rivets to I could peel the fuselage open and file the top of the F-804H so I could get rid of the interference with the F-887 longeron.

I advise builders to not butt the F-804H tight against the F-887. Allow a small amount of clearance, and keep an eye on this area during the construction to ensure the F-804H remains in the correct position. It also would have helped to put more of a curl in the F-804H, as that would force the top to sit tight against the rest of the F-804 instead of moving outboard.