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Showing posts from April, 2026

Rear NACA Vent Openings

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I will eventually be installing the Aerosport overhead panel along with the overhead vents, and to get air up to the vents I need to have a couple of NACA vents and ducts installed in the tail cone. As there are no NACA vent holes in the tail cone side skins, I needed to cut those out myself. To avoid reinventing the wheel, I did some research and decided to place them in the most common builder location starting approximately 5 rivets back from where the fuse skin overlaps the tail cone skin, centered in the area between the tail cone longeron and the uppermost J-channel. After marking out a centerline (making it parallel to the cabin mid deck since the tail cone angles slightly upwards along its length), I used a 3D printed template of the NACA vent opening to trace it on to the skin at the chosen location. NACA vent opening 3D model Centerline marked, and template used to draw vent outline onto skin NACA vent marked and ready for cutting To cut out the vent opening, I decided to avo...

35 - Access Covers & Floor Panels

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With a few hours to spare prior to taking a short Christmas break, I had decided to work on preparing the rear seat floors.  After deburring all edges and holes, I enlarged the cut outs that slide around the front seats supports by 1/32" on each side. Other builders have done this, and after taking a few measurements I confirmed that those openings would have been too tight otherwise. As all the holes are already final sized, I did not cleco the floors in place for final drilling as they are a tight fit, and I did not want to potentially cause any damage while pulling them back out. Instead, I dimpled all the required holes, and the floors are now ready for priming. Cutouts enlarged by 1/32" on each side to ensure the floors do not bind on the fron seat supports Left and right rear floors deburred, dimpled and ready for priming I also prepped several access covers for priming. These mainly required just edge deburring and some dimpling. Side access covers ready to be primed V...

33- Baggage Area and Access Panels

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While planning out my conduit and wire runs under the baggage area and rear seats, I started on section 33 and worked on baggage area tasks. As I will now be skipping around a fair bit in the plans and working in several sections simultaneously, I decided to stop tracking individual subsections and time spent, as that becomes more time consuming. From here on, the build also starts to become somewhat custom, so the work I do going forward will likely differ from other builders. I began this section by fabricating the F-6114B and C wear blocks. Once again a 3D printed drill guide made this easy without the need to manually measure and mark out each hole prior to drilling F-6114B drill template F-6114C drill template Drilling rhe wear blocks with the 3D printed drill guides Channels in the bottom of the F-6114C wear blocks were cut using the band saw and cleaned up with needle files I will be installing the Airward Baggage Area Access Panels that allow access to the step bolts if needed,...