Sun 21 March 2004 |
| Today Dad started be reworking some of yesterday's work. When cutting the large AL angle with the funny angles make sure you read the dimensions carefully......... | 
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| Then is was the normal drilling of the reference locations. | 
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| And match drilling the LHS / RHS parts in one go. | 
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| More brackets - same deal. | 
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| And of course everything has to be filed, deburred, smoothed etc. | 
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| Two more to add to the pile for priming. Dad also squashed and stretched some of the AL angle parts that I worked on yesterday and finished drilling them. | 
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| Remember the problem with the forward fuselage support rib and the 'drooping front'. Well after various research by Gus @ VANs it transpires that there are two parts the F-643 and the F-643-1. The -1 is the new part and has the flanges pointing to the right (as per current drawings), the original has the flanges pointing to the left. Well I had the original part and the new drawings - hence the confusion. It was nice to know I wasn't doing anything completely stupid and this is only the second major error that I've found so far. After a bit of trimming and shaping the part now fits nicely and we move onto the next thing. | 
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| I spent most of the rest of the day on the rear canopy frame. Firstly I wrapped up the edge cleaning and smoothing with the scotch brite. | 
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| And then started looking at the setup of a jig to hold the frame for layout and drilling. | 
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| I used three pieces of misc angle to set the top and two side limits of the frame. We took WAY too much time setting this all up and getting everything exactly right. But we continue to work on the principle of everything as precise as possible and hopefully it will all work out. | 
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| Once the two sides were bolted down to the bench top (via the tooling holes) I marked a line on both flanges. | 
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| Next up was the F-631E plate at the top centre, this was already prep'd so just a match drill and it was done. | 
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| To finish this evening I marked out the lower flanges with 1 1/4" spacing and pilot drilled them. | 
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| The finished lower structure ready for match drilling to the braces, a job for tomorrow. | 
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