Tuesday December 16, 2008
Continued F-704 Bulkhead Work (Bulkheads)
3.0 Hours

Tonight, I finished drilling the grommet holes in the two center section pieces...four each.

I also enlarged one 5/8" grommet hole in each of the vertical center section supports. The rudder cables will pass through these eventually.

Then, the vertical pieces get clecoed to the horizontal sections for drilling. Van's also has you stick in two of the close tolerance bolts to make sure these things are perfectly aligned. When they say "close tolerance," they mean it. I used some Boelube to make it a bit easier to get the bolts out after I was done. I reamed out the rivet holes and took it apart.

Then, you do nearly the same thing for the aft section. The aft has bar stock that bolts in to support the wing spar and you have to clamp and back drill two rivet holes through those.

Next, I worked on the control column support brackets. You start by drilling a 3/16" hole at the prescribed location.

Then, bolt it to the center section, square it, and back-drill the other hole.

Here are both of them drilled. The one on the right is slightly off of square, but it's a tiny error and won't matter. As Dan Checkoway notes, the bottom holes could be off 5 degrees and not be a problem.

The plans give you an optional weight savings on these angles, so I made the allowed cuts and smoothed them up on the grinder.

Next, you bolt on the control stick assembly to test fit everything while the center section is still out in the open. This will wait for tomorrow...

This work is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International