Monday December 5, 2022
Damaged and Removed F-712 aft bulkhead, Riveted sub panel
(1.5 Hours Aft Fuselage, 1.5 Hours Forward Fuselage)
3.0 Hours Total

So today I removed the empennage fairing and took off the vertical stabilizer, horizontal stabilizer, and the tailwheel spring. Then I moved the large sawhorse to the front and put the tail up on the small sawhorse. Then, I rolled the whole fuselage forward without thinking and dropped the tail off of the small sawhorse onto the ground. Without the tailwheel or the bolts through the F-712 into the WD-409 tail spring mount, the WD-409 hit the floor and moved upward, cracking the F-712 all the way up to the first bolt hole.

I was soooooo angry with myself. What a stupid mistake!

Luckily nothing else is damaged, but I will have to replace the F-712 bulkhead completely. I spent some time drilling out the rivets into the old one and then removed it. I'll have to wait for parts from Van's before I can install the new one.

I removed the engine mount and main gear legs/wheels.

I decided to rivet the sub panel in place. It's kind of a pain, with lots of rivets in difficult to reach places.

I still have quite a few rivets from the F-768B to F-902 rivets to finish...these are very difficult to reach with a bucking bar or rivet gun.

In the end, an extremely frustrating day that ended up with me creating more work for myself.

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