Having spent much of the day updating this blog I only had a couple of hours to spare, before going to a Scottish Aero Club talk on gyroplanes.
First step was to bend the top flanges on tailcone slightly outboard. Other web posters had said that the angles were not critical, though the plans call for bending each tab a specific number of degrees - 6 degreees, 7 degrees etc.
I then spent some time shuffling things around in the garage until I had space (just) to manoeuvre the tailcone into position on its trestles. I adjusted the trestle heights so that the front bottom lip of the tailcone was just higher than the fuselage baggage bulkhead. I could then add wood blocks to the rear trestle to get the two edges to line up. See Picture 1.
One the horizontal alignment was correct I edged the tailcone forward until it overlapped the fuselage bottom skin. I then put in some clecos every three holes along the bottom - Picture 2.
Finally I raised the tailcone in increments with further wooden blocks, checking that the various skins overlapped/underlapped as depicted in the plans. See Picture 3.
Once I was happy that the alignment was correct, I could raise the tailcone one further increment and add clecoes up the sides to hold it in place.
