Today I made the forward spacer between the two 1/8 thick halves of the right popup tipup arm and drilled #40 pilot holes for rivets. Like the other spacer, these will eventually be drilled up to #30, but I'll do that later.

After countersinking both sides of the arms, I "peened" a couple rivets to hold the assembly together temporarily.

Then it was time to work on machining down the thickness of the UHMW blocks that will guide the forward end of the popup tipup modification. I unpacked this Ryobi jointer / planer which I got from my Dad when he upgraded to a larger unit. I figured it would do a nice smooth job of trimming down the thickness of the plastic without leaving a rough surface like I get with the sander. Unfortunately, with a block as short as this, it's very difficult to avoide getting a snipe cut at the ends, so after several tries, I reverted to using the sander.

Here you can see the forward end of the popup tipup arms being guided by UHMW blocks on either side. Only thing left to do on this, the right side of the fuselage is to joggle these strips to allow a 5/16 wide rod end bearing between the sides, and drill / countersink the holes to final size, then it'll be ready for priming and assembly.