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The first order of buisness today was to match drill the center section to
the tailcone.
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Then it was time to fit the longerons. The first thing I did was to remove these
F-711C bars so that the longerons would fit even before I made the notch in them.
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Kerin helped me lift the fuselage so I could slip the longerons into position.
However, they didn't slide into the notches in the bulkheads all the way. The notches
are slightly too narrow. I really don't know why Van's doesn't just make these 3/16 inch
wide instead of trying to get them to exactly fit the longerons. Frankly I think that would
be better because the edges of these notches are bound to scratch off the primer (once I
actually have primed the longerons).
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After some work with a needle file, I got them to fit. I had to repeat this filing process at
all the bulkhead notches. Grrrr.
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At one point, Snickers came down to check out the progress and decided to lounge a bit in
his shop dog bed.
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After the filing, Kerin helped again and we successfully slipped the longerons into position.
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I took an alternate approach to positioning the longerons compared to what Van's recommends.
They say to align the aft end of the longeron with the aftmost flange of the F-712 bulkhead.
Instead of that, I chose to align the (downward) bend line of the longeron with the corner
of the F-770 side skin.
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Here you can see that I left the longerons...uhhh...long...when I was working with them originally.
I thought I would transfer the cut line while they're in assembly. Unfortunately they overlapped, so
I had to make a rough cut to chop them off before continuing.
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In preparation for drilling the longerons I went out and bought some new clamps. I really like the
large Pony c-clamps I bought at Home Depot, but they don't carry small Pony c-clamps. Instead they had
some crappy clamps, so I went to Lowes and got these Bessey c-clamps.
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I remembered to grab this close quarters dimple die off the table. I had ordered it earlier this week
when I was considering using AN426AD4 rivets to attach the F-776 bottom skin to the F-623L & R gussets.
I have since decided to just use extra AN426AD3 rivets. I'll just store this puppy with all the other
dimple dies for now. I'm sure it'll come in useful eventually.
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Sooooo...back to the longerons. I started using the Dremel and a cutting disc to chop off the ends
of the longerons. This was rather slow, however, so I reverted to using a hack saw.
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Choppety-bop and they're no longer overlapping.
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Then it was a bunch of clamping, aligning, drilling, and clecoing until I had the left
longeron completely drilled. (...okay...not completely drilled...I
still have to do the #30 holes at the very forward end of the longeron.
Since I don't have to mess with all the notch filing tomorrow, I should be able to get the
right longeron drilled in a lot less time.
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