Thursday, September 13, 2012

Tailcone Completed

I finished the tailcone today, well it's not completely done. The top skins are staying off because I will need access to the static port hole. Plus, I still haven't decided on a few other things and I still may need access to aft part of the tailcone. The back riveting was easy on the last skin but finishing this thing was a little difficult. The tailcone got very restricted further aft making a really tight place to work. Parts became difficult to rivet. For instance the rudder stop stiffeners (PN F-1055) are riveted to the rudder stop brace (PN F-1056) with two solid rivets on each side (see pic of view looking down into a hole, note the wadded up paper at the bottom for padding in case I drop the bucking bar it won't dent the skin....lesson learned the hard way). Anyway, it's impossible to rivet these without a really long rivet set, of which I do not own. So I decided to put MSP-42 pop rivets in instead. I checked the numbers and it looks like the thin aluminum will fail before the #4 rivet will, solid or pop rivet, so in they went. All in all the tailcone looks really good, kinda looks like an aluminum canoe but that's ok. Back riveting is absolutely the way to go for these skins and I also recommend leaving one side of the skins off when starting out. Once I finished the tailcone I went back to work on the lower fuselage, but didn't get to far before it was time to call it a night. (9.5)

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