SonexBuilders.net

All the bolts are in and torqued, hopefully for keeps.


Currently I am in the throes of much deburring. If any of you are having deburring withdrawal, or if you miss peeling stickers, there is no need to suffer. Come on over, I'll even give you a hangar key.

We finished deburring and removing labels. Reassembled one more time and got riveting.

Bryan,

Nice work there! You and your son are making steady progress. With the premade angles you will be assembling the forward fuse in no time. Also with the premade spars your wings will go quickly!

Thanks Scott!
On my favorite Waiex reference site (Ryan's) there were not details on how the tail box goes together. I spent some time thinking and this is what I came up with. First I had everything riveted in except the Y tail fitting and one bulkhead forward:


Next I clecoed together the shear panel, bulkhead and lower angle:

When I do this for real it will be riveted up before I drop it in.

Four of my faithful clecoes gave up their lives to be modified for the back. Not enough room with the doubler strap to use a regular cleco:


Here you can see normal and trimmed clecoes working together:


Y tail fitting in place but not the shear panel etc:


Then I dropped in the shear panel:


Then the longerons:


One last picture of the assembly. Next time is for real.


After that I went for a ride on the golf cart around the airport. No pics though.

Bryan, that's looking good, as long as you're spending a lot of time thinking about how it goes together it should be fine. I didn't take notes as I was assembling mine, just a lot of time and working it through in my head. Once it came to updating the blog, I forgot how I did it, so I didn't include details for fear of confusing the issue.

I did have to use my hand seamers to bend out the aft vertical edge of the fuselage side skins to clear rivets from the doubler strap, especially on the left side where the rudder piano hinge goes.

Another small detail, I made one pair of the rivets in the upper longeron near the front of the shear web, flush (sorry no picture). This was because I discovered that the hockey sticks, as they rest on the longeron, might contact the side of the protruding rivet heads. Maybe test the fitment/location of your hockey sticks before you drive all the upper longeron rivets home around the shear web.

I bent the aft skin out like the SB says. The rivets did not clear when not set, but by slowly setting them while flexing out the flange with a duct tape covered gasket scraper I was able to get them set. There is clearance between the rivet tails and doubler strap. Oh happy day. Thanks guys for the info.

Man that looks purty.

AP
#618

Bryan, suggest marking now the corners of the Turtledeck that will be notched to clear the hockey sticks. I had my Turtledeck halves separated when I made the cuts, and notched the wrong corner in one of them.

Thanks Ryan, will do!

We chucked the turtledeck on. Halfway there:


Looks awesome!