Aft Section Log 
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 February 3, 2021

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Aft Section
The lower fuselage is made up of two main pieces the Aft section or the Tail Cone and the Forward section. They are joined together by the skins at the baggage compartment bulkhead. The aft section is nothing but the bulkheads aft of the baggage compartment and four skins.
April 21, 2002 - 1.5 hours
Mounted my vise to the table. Cut the F-718 R&L Longerons to length and started trimming the back of the longerons where they meet the rear F-712 bulkhead.

April 22, 2002 - 1.75 hours
Finished the trimming on the aft end of the longerons and started bending the longerons

This shows the trimming that is done on the aft end of the longerons where they attach to the F-712 bulkhead.

A padded vise, a sturdy table, a big hammer and a LOT of patience is all it takes to get those bends in the longerons. Notice the balsa wood template that I used to check the curve. I wouldn't have used balsa wood except that it is all that I had around at the time.

April 23, 2002 - 2 hours
Finished bending the longerons

Longerons with the shallow bend in them. It doesn't look like 3 hours worth of work does it?

May 5, 2002 - 5.5 hours
Drilled the aft caonopy decks to the longerons and finished bending and twisting both longerons. Started fitting the two aft bulkheads, the tail wheel spring mount and the lower tailcone skin together.

Bent and twisted longerons with the aft canopy decks clecoed on.

May 12, 2002 - 3 hours
Almost finished trimming and fitting the aft bulkheads to the tailwheel spring mount. Started assembling the tail section.

This is the trimming that is required for the bottom tail cone skin to fit around the tailwheel mount.

This is part of the tail clecoed together.

Another view of what the tail looks like clecoed together.

May 13, 2002 - 1.25 hours
Drilled the mounting hole for the tailwheel spring and still tweaking the fit of the tailwheel spring mount.

Drilling the mount for the tailwheel spring.

I still have a couple of holes to drill but this is pretty much what the tailwheel mount looks like between the two aft bulkheads.

May 14, 2002 - 1.2 hours
Finally got the tailwheel mount to fit like I want. Finished clecoing in all of the bulkheads to the rear fuse section. Flipped the fuse over and hung a couple of plumb bobs to check alignment.

May 15, 2002 - 2.75 hours
Rechecked the alignment of the fuselage and started drilling out holes.

May 16, 2002 - 3 hours
Finished drilling the holes in the rear fuselage section and started taking it all back apart, deburring and dimpling holes.

May 17, 2002 - 0.75 hours
Still deburring and dimpling

May 18, 2002 - 3 hours
Finished deburring and dimpling all the skins, and primed all the parts of the aft fuse section

May 19, 2002 - 8.5 hours
Reassembled the aft section and started riveting it together.

This is a shot of the rear skin joints. This intersection of skins seems to be a little confusing so I took a picture of it.

May 31, 2002 - 0.4 hours
Got the wife to help me rivet a few of the bulkhead to bottom skin rivets.

June 1, 2002 - 1.5 hours
Finished riveting the tail section except for the parts that will be done when joining the other sections of the plane.

May 4, 2003 - 3 hours
Reattached the elevators and the rudder, fabricated and installed the rudder stops.

I used a plumb bob hanging from the trailing edge of the rudder to help get the angle set.

The finished rudder stop. I'll put the last two rivets in after the VS comes off.

June 16, 2003 - 1 hours
I messed up on locating the shoulder harness anchors in the aft fuselage. I only missed by a whole bulkhead. Anyway I have to fix it so I made a couple of parts and started gathering up the tools that I will need when I crawl back there.

June 17, 2003 - 1.5 hours
I crawled into the tailcone to fix a couple of problems. I had drilled the shoulder harness anchors to the wrong place and there was a low spot in my static tubing that I wanted to fix.

I cut a piece of hardboard to put in the back of the plane to crawl around on. I didn't want anything too stiff since the bulkheads are curved on the bottom. This worked really well.

Here is the properly placed shoulder harness anchor with the cable attached.

This is how I fixed my static port problem. I just moved the T up a little and let the slack gather at the top.

August 11, 2003 - 1.2 hours
Removed the tailwheel spring from the fuselage, prepared and primed all the parts for the tailwheel assembly.

August 12, 2003 - 1 hours
Painted the tailwheel and piddled around measuring some more firewall forward stuff.

I painted the tailwheel parts with black appliance epoxy.

August 14, 2003 - 0.75 hours
Assembled the tailwheel and installed it on the airplane. I also replaced the nylok nuts on the main gear attach points with all metal lock nuts.

The tailwheel is all painted, greesed and installed.

This is the main gear attach bolt. Yep one bolt is all there is.

Disclaimer:
This web site and the infomation contained within it are for entertainment purposes only. The opinions expressed on construction techniques are my opinions only and should not be confused with proper construction techniques. There is undoubtedly more than one way to build an airplane and some methods that I use may or may not work in any given circumstance. If there is any question please call the kit manufacturer. I love to help but I am not responsible for the misuse of any information contained on this web site.

 February 3, 2021
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