The major task completed today was fitting and match drilling the forward top skin to the fuselage frame. I used all but four of my 3/32" cleco's.
Clecoing and drilling the skin wasn't at all difficult, just a little time consuming. One frustration with the Vans Quick Builders did arise however. The instructions clearly state to leave riveting the small angle clip F-707B until after the skin is riveted in place as it will obstruct one of the skin rivet holes. Well, they've riveted it in place and it obstructs one of the skin rivet holes! By chance, I found another builders log where he had the exact same problem, and he solved it by fitting a single blind rivet int he hole in question. That's what I'll do as well.
The hardest task today was fitting the two c-chanel aft skin support brackets (bottom picture below). The instructions are very vague, and the drawing they reference (dwg 41) is not included in the fuselage kit. I headed home to print the drawing from my Vans CD I bought some time ago. I also searched other builder logs and found a guy who described the same dilemma. He said that he ended up shaping the bottom end to fit against the longeron, then drilled and cleco'd one hole at a time, all the while checking the fit at the top end. The chanel requires twisting to get it into place, and quite a bit of shaping at the top end.
I ended up getting them both in however I'm not terribly happy with how the right side piece ended up. I've got a 10mm gap where the chanel meets the bulkhead at the top. I think I'll order a replacement part and have another go.
Match drilling the forward top skin
My plane looked more like a porcupine
The two aft skin reinforcement ribs were very difficult to get right
