No skydiving today thanks to the rain, and Jackie was home so we expected some good progress on the plane. Except it really didn't work out that way. We hit various issues riveting the F-850 bottom skin and the F-802K fwd crossmember. From rivets that would tip rather than drive to an AN3 bolt in the gear tower that stripped its threads when I put it back in (I think the damage was done first time around because it took almost no force at all to strip and I've got pretty good at judging by feel). All these things caused additional delays while we made good.
Anyway, we got the F-850 bottom skin all riveted and the remaining rivets around the wing spar cutout after removing the false spar bars. Also got the F-802K fwd crossmember riveted to the F-822 floor, and didn't forget the two nutplates! It was the two outer most rivets that cause us problems here; they wanted to tip but after several attempts we got them. I still need to do the AN426AD4 rivets inside each gear tower that hold the side skin, F-843 lower spar and gear tower weldment (2 each side), but that means (again) removing bolts to give bucking access and frankly I'd had enough of being inside that fuselage today...
Later in the evening we applied firewall sealant to the aft edge of the bottom of the firewall and cleco'd the F-851 bottom skins in place. I also ran a bead of sealant along the two inside side corners of the firewall and fuselage to close up the gaps I missed when I fitted the two F-820 side skins to the firewall.
