Brief Description: Finished the step and restarted on Chapter 29
Today I finished up the steps and started back into Chapter 29 by riveting the mid deck on. Couple things on the steps, it seems the same guy that does the crappy fiberglass work also does the welding judging by the number of problems I have with the weldments. Besides the gear mount problem, and the problem some people have had with the trim brackets and the engine mounts, I can now add to the list the step mounts and the steps themselves. With the mounts it was simply missing the guide hole for drilling the steps, not a big deal just a data point. The steps however were off from each other by about 5 degrees. When following the plans method of aligning the steps I could see something wasn’t right. So I drew a chord line on the airfoil step shape and aligned it with the spar angle. Might not be perfect but it’s a lot better than what it was. Also, I double checked the airframe and it was level within 0.1 degree fore and aft and 0.0 degrees port to starboard so that was not the problem. Even with the steps now aligned to the spar there is a 5 degree difference in the angle of the downtube between the two of them. That’s enough to cause an inch difference if I would have used Van’s method without double checking. Thanks god the airframe components are all CNC punched.
Left leg downtube at 84.6 degrees after alignment
Right leg downtube at 79.1 degrees after alignment
