Chapter 7 – Fuselage Covering

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Another enjoyable chapter – did most of this in winter 2004, and in So Cal, though it doesn’t freeze, temps were often high of 60-ish. I bought a propane heater for my garage, and used it for the lay-ups. Heated garage for ~30 minutes to 75* plus ,which is amazing given my garage’s thin walls, open ceiling.

Shaping the urethane – this was real fun!

Can’t recall who also saw this, but the urethane foam cut per plans didn’t quite reach the tangent point of the fuselage bottom, so I micro’d an additional 2” or so. Turns out the cured micro, being cured and all, didn’t sand as cleanly as surrounding foam. I think it would have been okay to leave a gap between end of urethane and fus bottom tangent point, and later fill with micro. No biggie – took a bit more time/effort, that’s all.

Drilled out foam for alum slug inserts.

I bought a big-boy saws-all blade, grinded the end to fit my saber saw, and also cut a band-saw blade down for this part.

Some confusion about the actual shape of this. From plans revision notes, and other’s pictures, this is what I thought the transition should be. Fingers crossed!

Cut-out for center spar

Here’s where the problem of fuselage sides not sitting fully down in cradles hit me. The 1/8” gap between foam and cradles translated to 1/8” gap between longeron and foam spacers when the sides were created. After assembly, foam and longerons weren’t quite in place for the sides to be shaped right if I sanded down to expose ¼” of longeron. I created a corrected template with a radius the same as plans’, and used that to shape the sides.

Cleaned up transition and rounded sides.

Routed out depression around speed brake

Installed glide-slope antenna (Jim Weir kit). Routed channel for cable – went to center heat duct for now. Still not sure if this will be IFR, but leaving options open.

Laid up bottom, with LG reinforcements. I wasn’t as tidy as I’ve see others’…struggled a bit to hold layup down around corners and LG cover joggle, as many others have.

Swivel rig was a ¼” bolt resting on a grabber-style saw horse bracket. The bolt was sunk in a 2x4, and clamped to F22 and the firewall.

Another picure of the swivel rig I used. Side layups went easily.

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