Section 10 - Tailcone

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	Section Hours: 148.5	Section Status: Complete

September 6, 2006 (10-7 step 7): Today I got to drill… yep… drill… 249 holes… but who's counting! I final drilled one of the stiffeners before going in to work. After work I did the other two. Pull up a chair, and get comfortable cuz this is repetative stuff! My poor little drill actually quit on me once. If I had used the air drill on this there's no telling how many times our compressor would've come on! Oh well its done now!

Once all the stiffeners were drilled and clecoed I had to see what the next step was… it was late and I needed to get in bed… but I had to peek! It was to flip the assembly over and cleco the bulkheads in the rear of the tailcone in preparation for mounting the left side skin. Well, I just had to do that! Turns out the bulkheads needed some massaging and deburring to their flanges, and I didn't want to get that involved. But it was cool to see the tailcone (at least the beginnings of it) upright! So I had to get this cheesy pic!

September 7, 2006 (10-8 step 1): Well, there was a football game on tonight so I sort of half worked on the plane and half watched the game. Anyway, knowing that the relatively tight turn at the lower corners of the tailcone (where the bottom skin & side skins meet) were showing some signs of bumps where the bulkheads were, I wanted to try the same technique we used on the horizontal stabilizer nose ribs to help alleviate it. So, I ground a bit of the flange edges down and then filed them smooth and deburred them. I also rounded the flanges a bit to more match the skin shape. It was definitely a trial and error process, but turned out quite well. Interestingly enough, the smaller F-1012 bulkhead required even less massaging.

Here the F-1011 & F-1012 bulkheads are shown clecoed in. There are a lot of pieces and layers of aluminum to cleco through in a couple of places when putting these in so it isn't simply a 'just cleco it in there' task.

September 8, 2006: Van's agreed to replace our cracked F-1006B bulkhead. They said it was very common for the cracks to be repaired, but I expressed a desire to have it replaced instead. So, we'll have to skip around in the plans in order to make due until the new bulkhead gets here.

(10-8 step 2): With the left side stiffeners in place I started off the day by clecoing the side skin on. Just as on the right side the first step was to use the marks Angela made on the stiffeners to position them for drilling. I simply positioned the crosshair mark so that it was visible through the foreward most hole and then clamped the stiffener in place. Then the first hole on each stiffener was drilled and clecoed.

(10-8 step 6): It was nice to have Angela back in the shop with me again! She jumped right on the some of the fabricating tasks. Here she cut the rudder stop brace out of a piece of .063x3/4x3/4 angle. I think she may have been a little rusty from all the time off though. She actually cut it incorrectly the first time around. Hard to explain the specifics, but the end result was a piece that couldn't be used because of edge distance issues. So, we browsed the plans to see if there was another place we could use the piece. Turns out the piece was just big enough to use for the two trim bellcrank brackets we'll be cutting in secction 11... whew! So, she tried again, and this time it came out perfect.

(10-8 step 4): Next Angela separated and deburred the rudder stop skin stiffeners.

(10-9 steps 3-5): After that she was on to the bellcrank rib angle. This originally comes in one piece, but must be separated into four. Then there were various size holes to drill and some nutplate attachment holes that had to be countersunk.

(10-8 step 3): After Angela finished her fabricating tasks she decided to pull up a stool and help me with match drilling the stiffeners. With two of us doing this it wasn't too bad.

(10-8 steps 5 & 7): Now that the assembly is symmetrical again (both sides are on and match drilled) the next step is to install the rudder stop skin stiffeners and the rudder stop brace. The stiffeners were clecoed in first, and then the plans call for making sure the tailcone is free from twists prior to match drilling the rudder stop brace. This is done by placing a level across the front of the assembly, and another across the rear (visible just in front of my drill in the pic). When both bubbles are level the rudder stop brace is placed up against the F-1012 bulkhead and clamped to the rudder stop skin stiffeners. Once its secured there are 4 holes in the F-1012 bulkhead that are match drilled into the brace. After all these are drilled, the brace is removed and the holes are deburred. Then it is reinstalled and the stiffener holes are match drilled into the brace. These holes are right up against the bulkhead and they are pretty far down in there so a 12" long drill bit is used. As you can see in the pic the 12" bit just barely has enough clearance.

(10-10 steps 3 & 6): While I was toying with long drill bits, levels, and clamps, Angela decided to do some more fabricating. She cut the F-1010B spacer out of a piece of AS3-125x1.000. After that she began deburring some parts we'll be needing in the near future such as the F-1011B stop/doubler, and the F-1014 aft deck (shown here). This piece will become the top deck of the rear part of the tailcone. The horizontal stabilizer will mount on top of this deck.

(10-13 step 1): Since one of the next steps is inserting the F-1006 bulkhead that we don't have just yet, I started looking for other things to do. So, I decided to go ahead and make the horizontal stabilizer attachment bar support angle (say that 3 times real fast!). This is another angle that will attach to the top of the aft deck.

Nothing in particular with this pic other than just being excited about our progress. This is really starting to look like the tail end of an aircraft fuselage… OUR aircraft fuselage! Of course pics don't do it justice, but this thing is over 8 feet long. To put it into perspective, this portion of the fuselage lies completely behind the passenger compartment, and even behind the baggage compartment. So, there's a whole bunch more fuselage to come! Angela & I were looking it over for a while and trying to picture the remainder of the fuselage attached to the front of it and how it would fit in the garage... it looks like it'll be tight! Oh... and we planned to store this thing in the house once it was done while it waited for the rest of the fuselage... well, now that its starting to take shape, that looked like it may be in question also. We took some measurements and sure enough, it won't fit through any of our doors! Looks like it'll be staying out here once its done!

September 9 & 10, 2006 (10-6 steps 1 & 3): Yesterday & today I could only sneak out in the shop for a little over an hour total. I was able to bend the left longeron, get them cut to length, and get these cool & groovy notches cut in them! These notches provide clearance for the horizontal stabilizer attachment bars that stick up out of the aft deck on the tailcone. The longerons are now ready to drop in place.

September 30, 2006 (10-10 step 4): First thing was to drop the longerons in place. You can see the slots I cut in them for the horizontal stabilizer attachment bars. The bulkheads in the forward part of the tailcone have notches cut in them. I had to open these up a little bit with a file in order for the longerons to fit properly.

(10-10 steps 5 & 6): Once the longerons were in place Angela dropped the F-1010B spacer in place to fill the gap between the longerons on top of the F-1010A horizontal stabilizer attachment angle. After that she clecoed the aft deck and the F-1011B stop/doubler in place.

(10-11 steps 1 & 2): After the aft deck was clecoed in place we used a bunch of clamps to lock the longerons, aft deck and side skins together. The longerons are still just sitting in place since there are no pre-punched holes in them, but that's about to change. Here Angela is match drilling the skin holes into the longerons using the upper edge of the skins to align the longerons.

(10-5 step 1): Now that we have our replacement bulkhead from Van's it was time to get on it, so I began the deburring process. I'm a little more anal about it so it takes me a bit longer than Angela. Not too worry though… I've been away from this for so long I really don't mind it today! As I finished each section of the bulkhead I clecoed it in place in the tailcone. Once they were all in I final drilled all the common holes between the sections.

(10-9 steps 1 & 2; 10-10 steps 1 & 2): Once the F-1006 bulkhead was in place I then clecoed the baggage bulkhead channel in place (the vertical piece in the pic). After that I clecoed the bellcrank angles on top of the bellcrank ribs. Then it was time to match drill all these peices together.

(10-11 steps 3 & 4): I had no idea what time it was, but I knew it was late… oh well, I still felt good and decided to press on. The last thing I did for the night was final drill all the remaining holes in the side skins to the bulkheads and frames and also the web holes in the aft-most bulkhead in the tailcone. I was tempted to final drill the holes on the bottom skin but when I realized it was 2:00am, I decided I should call it here... that's it, a good day back!

October 2, 2006 (10-11 step 5): Tonight Angela & I had a late soccer game (yes… Angela talked me into playing again!) Well, I can never just take a shower and fall asleep after a game, I need some time to wind down. And what better way to wind down than building an airplane! So, I turned on the TV in the shop, pulled up a chair and spent some time final drilling all the holes on the under side of the tailcone. Pretty boring stuff, so no pics. But it did the job... another step in the plans checked off, and I was definitely wound down :-)

October 3, 2006 (10-12 step 2): First up tonight was to relocate the tailcone to a lower level since we'll be putting the top skins on. After we got that taken care of Angela deburred the small bulkhead frame that'll be where the upper skins terminate at the aft deck. Then she clecoed it in place and final drilled the common holes.

(10-12 step 3): While Angela was messing with the frame piece I began fluting the two-holed flanges on the upper bulkheads & frames per the plans.

(10-13 step 2): Well, Angela wasn't quite done so I decided to move ahead a bit. We still needed to fabricate the up elevator stop so that's what I did. Here I'm drilling one of the five 1/8" holes in the finished piece which is made out of 1/8"x3/4"x3/4" 6061-T6 aluminum angle.

(10-12 steps 4, 5 & 7): While I was finishing up the up elevator stop Angela slid the 3 remaining stiffeners into their respective slots in the upper portions of the bulkhead frames. We then worked on clecoing the two upper skins in place. These are relatively stiff so at times it took 2 of us to get the holes lined up and get a cleco in. According to the plans we were supposed to match drill the stiffeners after the rear skin was on but before the front one went on. Oh well... guess we missed that. It's too late tonight, we're going to bed. I don't think we'll have a problem with it next time though.

October 6, 2006 (10-12 steps 6-9): Another no picture day… sorry… nothing special. I wound up having to remove the forward skin in order to position the stiffeners prior to drilling. These stiffeners are just like the ones on the belly, and the side skins… no predrilled holes, and we use the line we drew on them to position them under the holes in the skin. So, basically just the tedious process of position & drill.

October 7, 2006 (10-12 step 9): This morning the first thing I did was finish final drilling all the top skin holes (the ones connecting the skins to the frames, bulkheads, etc). Same drill as before… basically every hole in the skins except for those in the forward skin where it mates to the F-1006 bulkhead. These holes are where the tailcone matches to the rest of the fuselage so they'll be final drilled at that time.

(10-13 step 3): Next up was to make sure the aft deck was still clamped in its proper location. Since the top skins want to be flat they have a tendency to pull outward on the longerons a bit. Ours seemed to have wandered out just a bit so I adjusted & reclamped everything. Once it was all squared away I got to match drill the four holes in the aft deck into the horizontal stabilizer attachment angle and the spacer sitting on top of it. These comprise a bit of aluminum so it was a decent amount of drilling. You get to exercise a bit of patience here as the tendency to push the bit through to speed things up creeps up in the back of your mind!

(10-13 steps 4-7): Look ma… no clamps! Here's a shot of the aft deck completely pre-assembled. To get to this point I had to drill all the vertical holes along the sides of the aft deck going through to the longerons. After that it was all the holes in the F-1011B stop/doubler. Then the attachment bar support angle and the up elevator stop were clamped in place and then drilled. All of the holes common with each of these pieces and the longerons were opened up even further with a #12 drill bit. These holes will get bolts instead of rivets.

(10-14 step 1): Angela came out to lend a hand… but wait… she's taking it apart! Somebody stop her!! Actually, this begins the teardown of the tailcone.

(10-14 step 2): Once the skins were off this allowed access to be able to attach the shoulder harness attachment brackets for the rear seats. These will bolt to the longerons so Angela's drilling #12 holes.

(10-15 steps 2 & 4): After a quick lunch break Angela & I spent the rest of the day disassembling. We adopted the approach of deburring as we went. Basically pick a part, unclecoe it, debur the drilled holes, inspect it for any other burrs, nicks or scratches, set it aside, repeat. We both agreed we like this 'as we go' approach since it really helped to break up the monotony of the whole process. Unfortunately we didn't get the whole assembly torn down though.