I continued first thing with the brake lines. Both the tops were cut / flared after sorting the split plastic tube spacers.
The completed the lower leg of the brake lines, not sure if the clearance is going to be enough for fairings (see below) but good to start with.
Dad continued with the steps mounting, the outer skins has to be 'shaped' for the weld bead on the steel steps. Slow iterative work.
The second column of rivets we re-aligned and back drilled just two locations through the skin vertical stiffener.
Completed step, ready for priming / riveting. At the moment we are also planning on putting a layer of Pro-Seal to help waterproof it. Obviously the other side also had to be completed.
I went on to a different area - main wheel fairings. These have to be mounted / aligned whilst there is no weight on the wheels (ie. the flying position) but I think that could get progressively harder as more parts are completed / installed. Therefore a first cut was started today.
The first step is to mate the forward / aft halves of the fairing. This is tricky as there are no reference lines for any of the 'planes'. ie. no longitudinal, lateral or 'yaw' markings. I used a combination of hand file and sanding belt to get a reasonable fit.
Once everything was looking OK, I re-taped the two parts together and then used a line to give a center location (top & bottom) which helped considerably.
Then it was drilling / celcoing and opening the wheel hole shape. This is all very emperical, eye line based etc, looks like it should work OK.
Then rotar burr to open the shape in combination with air file and cutting disk.
A suitable 1" spacer (bucking bar) was used to locate the top of the fairing and the inboard edge progressively trimmed to fit.
By the end of the day I had a first cut mounting of both forward and aft halves, although the clearance on the brake line seems to be a problem. Until we get some proper alignment going of the aircraft / wheels it is going to be difficult to know how bigger problem the interference is going to be.
