This morning was a perfect day for working on the plane. It was cool, relatively low humidity, and had an overcast sky...my favorite kind of weather. First thing today was to locate the edge stripping for the four flanges of the fuel pump and fuel filter mounting plate. It took me quite a while to locate this little 10 inch long strip.

Some days I feel like the "Measure twice, cut once" poster child...today was just such a day. Somehow I managed to cut one of the pieces 3.5 inches long instead of cutting them all 2.5 inches long. Ah well, $3 later I had a replacement strip on the way.

After that fiasco, I got my wits together enough to rivet the side rails to the longeron on the right side of the fuselage...

...and also the left side. You can see that there are a few rivets yet to install. These need a different bucking bar, so I'm not going to try to drive them solo. I'll wait until I have a helper.

After that, I decided to start working on Snickers' dog platform over the baggage compartment. One of the changes I decided to make was to countersink the aft two rivets connecting the longerons to these gussets. This'll allow the platform to rest flush atop the longeron flanges.

I put quite a bit of thought into how to design the platform and decided I needed a center support that will tie into the vertical rib just behind the F-706 bulkhead. I stretched a piece of fishing line from one longeron to the other and aligned a piece of angle with the fishing line and used a sharpie to transfer this line to the side of the vertical rib.

Next I spent quite a bit of time fabricating the center rib. It's made of two pieces of 3/4 x 3/4 x 1/16 angle arranged in a T configuration.