For grins and giggles and to see if everything fits, I clecoed the upper forward fuselage assembly in place.  I'm going to make my own panel but I place the Vans supplied panel in to test.  Everything is snug.

I used JB weld when placing the screen on the fuel vent openings.

When mounting the bracket that supports the seal, you're supposed to mount it 1/8 in. lower and these small brackets should also match the contour.  I attached some angle to the face to make sure the whole thing was straight before clamping and drilling.

Mounted the starter solenoid and battery contactor.  Simple stuff.

Decided that while I was having such a good time I would get all the brake lines in place.  This is a huge no brainer.  Just follow the plans.  Had to search for some of the parts which were hiding in the finish kit.  And since I've never inventoried any of this stuff, well you get the picture.  I placed the paper down on the floor because I wasn't sure if the master cylinders had brake juice in them.  They didn't.  A huge waste of paper.

First I made sure the inside lower corner was radiused the clamped the mount together and drilled the keeper rivets.  Using two of these small clamps works perfectly.

Here's what it looks like before you take a vixen file to it.

Here's what it looks like afterwards.  I clecoed the skin on and it's perfect.

Sort of doing odd jobs now.  When you get to this point you can literally work on 50 different items.  Just picking one to work on is sometimes the hardest part.  Riveted in the firewall recess and finally bent both ends of the seat back hinge rod.  I don't ever expect to have to take it off.  Why spend all that time fabricating some dohickey mount.  Just bend the ends.

Remember when I said there were 50 things you could work on at this phase?  Here's one of them.  Locating the mounting for the ELT antenna.  The antenna must not be covered by aluminum.  So placing it just behind the rollbar is adequate as the rear windows are above it.  Now how to route the coax.  I still haven't figured that out.  The premade coax that comes with the ACK ELT has fixed ends and they won't fit through the plastic bushings.  Looks like I'll have to make a new on in place.

More work on the fricken canopy.  Will it ever end?

More fricken canopy work.  But Hey, it's basically done.

Here's something I got from Dan's plane I think.  It's the mount for the ELT antenna.  I used a little offset wire tie holder I bought at the air show, placed the antenna spring in a clear plastic tube, which fit perfectly and before the rollbar was riveted shut I mounted the holder.  It's gonna work perfectly.

One thing to note when you rivet the inside rivets.  Use a thin head flat die so you don't smash the curvature.

I decided to scrap the RV and build a Sonex.

Starting to get stuff together for the Canopy.  Yes!  The next phase begins.

Next I marked a line on the narrow end where I wanted the vent to line up with the existing cutout on the fuselage skin.  Without some kind of reference line you don't know if you are leaving enough flange fore or aft to drill into.  Clamped the vent in place and back drilled through the holes in the vents through the skins with a short 90 degree drill.  The aft most holes were a bit difficult as they are covered a bit by the exhaust portion of the vent, but it's doable.

Countersink the vent and dimple the skins with a pop-rivet dimpler.  I'm going to wait to do final installation.

I went to Home Shlepo this morning a bought a new orbital sander.  It's made by Rigid.  It's a full 3 amps and has won a lot of awards over the past year.  It's awesome.  It you are thinking about getting an random orbital sander this is the one you want, and it's only about $70. 

I needed the sander to cut the edge off the Azko primer.  If I had to do this all over again I WOULD NOT PRIME ANY INTERIOR PIECES that I intended to paint with interior paint.  Let this be a warning.  Sanding sucks, even if you do have a great sander.

Sanded a fair amount of removable parts almost all the way to the bare alum.  Then cleaned very well with your favorite fast-evaporating solvent.  This paint is very kewl.  You don't need a second part.  Just dilute with 10% water, mix and you are ready to go.  I had also purchased a new automotive primer paint gun last week.  You need a gun that can shoot very thick viscous material.  This paint is so thick, that even with thinning it doesn't move very fast at all.  You kind of dump it instead of pour it. 

The gun worked well except for a few little chunks which it spit out.  I don't think I had the HVLP pressure high enough.  Lesson learned.  But all the parts came out beautifully.  Here the parts are drying, and some close-ups of the paint out of and in the sun.  It's really hard to get the color right on my camera.  I need a new one.

Later in the day I finally figured out where my pilot and co-pilot headset and mic jacks will go.  Some ideas I've gotten from other builders were very helpful.  But I wanted the jacks to be behind the pilot and copilot.  This keeps the wires out of your lap.  Also I wanted it above the pilot and copilot heads.  This keeps it from hanging on the shoulders too much.  Well there are only two places where this will work; one is the baggage bulkhead and the second is a place you have to make.  I decided to fabricate a removable panel on the bottom side of the F-632A channel which runs between the rollbar assembly and the F706 bulkhead.  Pretty simple installation.  I'll run the wires later.  The jacks are mounted with bushings to isolate the jacks.  Lots of pictures.

Finally riveted the hat channels or whatever they're called with pop rivets.

Finally masked all the interior off.  I'm painting this sucker tomorrow come hell or high water.

7/20/04

I've spend the past three days (actually the past year) thinking about all that I would like in the plane, what goes on the panel, what each switch is for, how it's laid out, switch types, annunciator lights, electrical bus configurations, wire runs, lighting, batteries, shunts, resistors, crimping tools, load analysis, instrumentation wiring, on and on and fricken on.  And of course once you finalize this stuff you need to start ordering parts.  I've given up taking pictures of crap that arrives via FedEx and UPS and regular mail.  I could do a whole seperate page just for that.  Hell I know the FedEx and UPS guys so well I could do a page on them since they seem so critical in getting all these parts here!

Sooo, no pictures the past several days, unless you want to see a picture of me sitting in the garage with that really stupid look on my face that says "Geese, I really don't know, what should I do?". 

I've been researching switches for the panel for a very long time.  I wanted switches which were internally lit with LEDs, could handle 10 ADC and were square pushbuttons and would fit side by side at 1" spacing.  I found this particular switch.  It works very well but it has a square mounting hole and I would prefer round.  I may just stick with the toggle switches from B&C.  Dunno.

My last order from B&C came with a 100 Amp breaker but I ordered an ANL 60.  I sent B&C an email and within minutes they had called me and said they would send the correct order ASAP.  Awesome service and their products kick arse.

Fabricated a shelf across the bottom of the F-745 forward fuselage ribs.  I really didn't want to drill any more holes than necessary in the firewall stiffeners.  Then added another rib ahead of that shelf.  The gap is for wiring runs.  It may or not be handy.  I suppose I should have just built a larger shelf.  Then drilled the holes for the AHRS unit.