Seat structure

It's been a productive week - making good progress on the main fuselage.

To begin this session, I completed assembly of the baggage area floor structure - adding the bearing supports for the flaperon controls.

Close-up of the flaperon bearings and the support channel in the centre.  This area is the subject of a service bulletin from Vans where the support channel is known to crack at rivet holes after a few hundred hours in service.  My kit has the improved system with extruded supports for the channel between the bearings.

A view of the completed baggage bay floor structure.

So now on to the cockpit floor and seat structures.  Unfortunately I didn't take many intermediate photos - just got on assembling the 70 pieces that I'd previously prepared.  You have to follow the instructions very carefully in the right order or you can't get access to put in some of the rivets and also so you don't dimple the wrong holes!.  

Looking aft from the front of the right (passenger) seat. The bracket in the centre of the middle ribs is for fixing the crotch strap of the passenger seat belt, and the small brackets to the right are for a control pulley. 

 This is looking down on the same area shown above.

This is the left seat structure looking aft and showing the flaperon mixer which is protruding into the tunnel between the seats.  It'll be interesting to see this come together as I can't yet see how it works!  It's only moves about +/- 10 degrees fore-aft.  To the right of the mixer (left-side in the aircraft) you can see a thick doubler inside the second vertical rib.  This is an extra part needed if installing an autopilot so I'm taking advantage of doing it now whilst everything is more accessible.

 Looking down and forward on the pilot's seat pan with the flaperon mixer on the right.

The two seat structures just placed in front of the centre section where they'll be riveted on the next build session.  It'll start getting two-handed to move about once these are fitted.   At the rear of each seat pan you might spot some small lugs sticking up at 45 degrees.  These are where the seat belt lap-straps are installed. The channel between the two taller vertical frames in the centre is where the main undercarriage legs fit. 

Final view from this session, looking down on the two seat structures resting against the centre section.   The sections of hinge running across the seat pan are to hold the bottom of the backrest - two positions allowing for adjustment for taller/shorter pilots.   I did make a mistake here - I had the end lug and space the wrong way round on all four pieces of hinge so had to re-make them.  Fortunately I had some spare hinge from correcting a previous error on the stabilator trim tab.  

I also prepared a few other parts today so I can make another full day of assembly.  Then it's back to a several days of prep again but that'll have to wait as I'm away for work and holidays for most of March.

Fuselage underway

Fortunately the minor operation on my right knee went very well, so much so that I didn't need crutches at all and am walking almost totally normally after just 3 weeks.  So it's time to get back in the garage, with the added benefit of some warmer weather.

As mentioned in my previous post, the aim now is to do much more preparation each time, so  reducing wasted paint and to give a greater time on assembly.  With this in mind I prepared about 70 parts of the centre fuselage - going forward through the build manual to try and catch all of the parts I'd need for a large assembly step.  Rather tedious sitting there filing and deburring for days on end but it's a means to an end as they say.

A large selection of fuselage parts painted and ready for assembly, sitting on top pf the main belly skin.

The first assembly job is to fit some corner pieces to the centre section bulkhead, followed by installing the aft bulkhead and side supports.  Included at this stage in the manual is bolting-in of two nylon guide blocks.  I've just put them in place loosely so they can be removed when the interior is painted before fitting out of systems.

 The centre section with the aft bulkhead installed.  Lots of aching hands and arms after hand-squeezing all of the solid 1/8th rivets.

End view of the centre section (I need to touch in some of the paint).  The main undercarriage legs will, bolt to the underside of the large machined U-section between the two bulkeads.   The wing-pin bushes are still masked off and will stay like that until the interior has been painted.

Fitting the baggage bay floor panels to the centre-section aft bulkhead.  Some of the end rivets are particularly awkward and I ended up using a pneumatic gun and backing block for a couple where squeezers wouldn't fit.   Haven't done much of that type of riveting since I was an apprentice!

 Baggage floor installation complete.  The hole of on the right floor panel is for the fuel tank outlet - the tank occupies the right side behind the seats and the baggage area is on the left.

This picture shows the floor ribs installed below the baggage bay floor, and the next parts (rear spar carry-through, flaperon bearing blocks and additional floor ribs) ready to fit.   The two semi-circular rivet patterns are for the rear wing-spar locating point.

 End view of the rear spar carry-through.  The 'pocket' is where the tab on the wing rear spar will engage in the fuselage.  There's no bolt to fix it - the only wing fastening will be two large pins through the main spars and the centre-section bushings shown above, to allow for quick wing removal/installation.

 A view of the underside of the baggage bay floor showing the ribs installed.

Finally a view of the front side of the centre section.  The seat structures will be attached here in the next stage of assembly which hopefully will continue very soon.