Brief Description: Pilot's collective well base panel assembly
Making and fitting the panels for the interior of the cabin are just a small part of the task. Properly installing and planning out the fastners take a great deal of time and focus. This is a critical phase of the panel fabrication because one wrong or misplaced hole will cause you to rebuild the entire panel from scratch.
Today was the first installation of nut plates on the cabin. There will be easily over a hundred installed by the end of the project, so being competent sountersinking and installing them with rivets will be important. I am making the pilot's collective well fully accessible and able to be disassembled, unlike the opposite well which will be riveted together on the right side of the ship.
In addition, since the nut plates were going to be resting on the bare aluminum, I prepared the base and side piece for painting and used a self-etching primer recomended to me by my sheet metal instructor. I'm only priming the areas that are going to be on the inside of the panels against the frame.
The nut plates are almost too tight to accept the screws, so as recommended by several people, I need to tap the plates to clean them up a bit. I didn't have the right tap, so needed to order it from Spruce. It will be here in a few days, and I can then assemble the full panel.
