I had three issues in this section, one minor, and one major, and one in between. The minor one involved inserting the F-1044 rib assembly (which consists of the rib, the 1044B support angle and brackets on both sides of the rib) into the sub-panel for final assembly. It all went together easy before riveting, but once it was all riveted, the angel and brackets made it almost impossible to insert in the sub-panel’s slot. It was frustrating as hell, but I knew it had to go together somehow as I made no mistake in assembly sequence per the plans. I think at some point I just lucked into the right orientation and bingo they were together. The major issue was purely self-inflicted. I ruined the upper fuse skin by cutting holes for my defrost fans in the wrong place. I triple measured everything, but what I missed was my reference point – it was supposed to the aft edge of the skin. Unfortunately I measured from the forward edge of the skin which put the holes outside of the windscreen instead of inside! Nothing to do but order a new skin from Van’s. I did and it arrived about a week later. I then carefully re-measured and cut the holes-this time in the right spot. I then located and drilled the mounting holes for the two fans. My in-between issue dealt with riveting on the curved panel attach flanges-- I reversed them. You wouldn’t think that would be possible but I managed to do it anyway and didn’t discover the error until after I had them riveted on and went to test fit the panel and the screw holes didn’t line up. So I drilled out the rivets, swaped them around and re-riveted them back on —of course I managed to mangle 4 holes in the process so I had to use oops rivets to fix it. This whole section basically should have been a piece of cake but it turned into a real headache.
