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Jims RV-8
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Date:  9-11-2014
Number of Hours:  3.00
Manual Reference:  8-25
Brief Description:  Adding Tailcone to Fwd Fuse – Aft Bottom Skins

Tonight I was able to cleco on the 2 bottom skins…although it wasn’t as smooth as usual. The difficulty was self-induced, by my interpretation of the instructions but was a continuation of the learning process. The first issue I had was with the aft bottom skin, the small one in the aft section of the fuselage. I tried to cleco that skin into place with the last two bulkheads already attached to the fuselage structure – and that didn’t work, the skin was not fitting properly. So, upon re-reading the instructions I then figured out that, “Cleco the F-828-1 Aft Bottom Skin in place on the F-811-1 Bulkhead Assembly and F-812-1 Bulkhead Assem­bly” really means that I should assemble the F-811 & F-812 bulkheads with the F-828 skin, apart from the rest of the fuselage and then insert the complete assembly. So that is what I did and it worked out really well.

The next step was to cleco the large aft bottom skin to the fuse. I slid the front part of the skin in between the F-807 bulkhead and the F-826 mid skin and then clecoed the aft portion at the rear. Then I walked the clecos forward alternating side to side, back to front and on the bottom. All was going well until I got to the last 15 holes on the forward left side! Those holes would not line up and would not pull into alignment – so I went searching…What I finally found was the forward tab on the right lower longeron (F-889) was sitting outside of the forward skin and was not allowing the skin to sit flush on the right side which was causing the skin to be out of alignment. I would suggest to anyone building an -8 that when you get to this step – you cleco from the front to the rear as the front is where all the intricate alignment is. After I unlcecoed the right longeron, slid it back, pulled it inside where it was supposed to be, the the re-clecoes went in easily. From there I jumped over to the other side and finished off the left side easily. So, It shouldn’t have taken me 3.0 hours to do what I did. {NEVER FORGET 9-11-01}
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Aft bottom skin shot

Aft bottom skin shot

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