FrontDeck

Time to rivet the painted side sub-panels in the fuse. That was actually pretty challenging as it was tough to get the rivet gun into the space behind the F702 bulkheads.

Riveted the support angle on the center sub-panel.

Then clecod the rest of the front deck panels in place.

Last but not least I drilled the ECU (engine control) onto the right rib as there is where the ECU cabling will come through the firewall.

The Bus Manager is going to be installed on the left rib. Since it doesn't have any screw holes or something, it will be installed with velcro and two large tie-wraps to hold it in place.

Cut the panel ribs at the intersection with the subpanel and primed the parts. Fabricated some brackets that will be used to rivet the front panel ribs back onto the subpanel after I've figured out where the instruments will go.

Deburring and scotchbriting of front deck parts. Not much to say about it...

Finished most of the drilling and match-drilling of the front deck today. Here are the finished angles to keep the instrument panel in place on the front canopy decks.

Assembled both the air vents that go in the bottom corners of the instrument panel. The white shroud that goes in the back had to be made a bit smaller on all sides to make it fit with the black vent itself. I fabricated the two alu angles that will keep the vents to the side skins. I used my circle hole cutter to make a cut of 1 and 7/16 inch radius in the angle. Worked very well!

The panel had to be modified a bit at the location where the vents screw in, but that was easily done. Actually I now realize (while I'm writing this) that the vents probably had to be mounted behind the panel instead of in front of it... Duh! AH well it doesn't look too bad this way, so I'm going to keep it. Only a small detail out of many.

That's it. I started to take the whole structure apart from that point to prepare for deburring, countersinking and priming.

More work on the front deck today. I bend, clamped, drilled and cleco'd the 703 angle to the back of the instrument panel. I won't rivet it yet because I probably send the panel in for laser-cutting when I know what the layout is going to be and cutting without the angle will be easier.

Also clamped and drilled the 268D angles to the side panels.

Next was the skin that goes on top of this all. I match-drilled all of the holes and drilled the 644 ribs and 643-1 rib to the skin. Next was clamping the firewall flange to it (I already drew a centerline on it earlier) and drilling those with lots of boelube.

To get to the firewall-643-1 angle intersection I took the center panel out and climbed into the fuse to do drilling from the cabin. The small angle got clamped and drilled quickly that way.

The instrument panel is held to the 721A front canopy decks with some more small angle pieces which have nutplates on them. The 721C's got clamped and drilled first and I fabricated the 721D's which will be drilled tomorrow (they also have quite a bend to them).

Not bad for a days work!

More work on the front deck today. I clecod the front upper skin on (which was tough!) and for coolness put the canopy fwd skin on as well.

Also used my drill press and band saw to fabricate the 268D angles. Lots of sanding and filing.

Last but not least I started fabricating the 703B angle which will go on the back of the instrument panel. I couldn't do this with the band saw as the angle was too long, so used my hand saw with a metal blade in it. The angle was stuck in my vice for safety.

We came back from a short beach vacation a bit earlier so I had some extra time in the shop to work on the front deck. Clecod all the pieces onto the fuse to see what it would look like.

Did I mention I bought my stick grips? The right hand one was shipped last week while the other is on back order.

I fabricated and drilled the pieces behind the center sub panel (incl. the 643-1 rib). Also fluted, drilled and clecod the strip that will hold the weather strip for the canopy later on.

Drilled the engine bracket to the center sub panel and the fabricated the 644 ribs and clecod them to the subpanel.

Started construction of the front deck today and created 5 angle brackets.