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.
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| Centerline marked, and template used to draw vent outline onto skin |
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| NACA vent marked and ready for cutting |
To cut out the vent opening, I decided to avoid using any power tools in order to reduce the risk of accidentally cutting into the skin where I was not supposed to. I instead chose to drill a hole through the center of the vent (I lied, I used one power tool!) and then a set of
hand operated nibblers to cut around the opening. These worked really well and I was able to remove material very close to the outline without worrying about going too far.
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| Starting hole drilled through center of vent opening |
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| Using hand nibblers to rough cut around the opening in a controlled fashion |
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| Rough cut complete. |
I then used files to finish trimming the opening to size. The same process was then repeated on the right side to finish creating the two openings.
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| Left rear NACA vent opening done, now working on the right |
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| Vent openings turned out great, both on the right... |
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| ...and on the left |
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| Vent openings as seen from inside the cabin (after vacuuming out the debris) |
Dates: February 17 - February 18 2026
