Brief Description: Joining the aft and center sections
This is actually two days worth of work. I finished drilling the baggage compartment bottom skins to thier respective ribs (no photos.) That was the last piece of work before I joined the two sections together. But first I needed to make space where I could keep the fuselage in one place. That meant rearraigning the hangar. The aft section was on a wheeled stand that I could move around and the center section was on a work bench. Whatever the solution was going to be, I needed to make sure the Cherokee could still fit in the hangar. My lovely wife volunteered to come over and move work benches. It took a few hours but we finally finsihed on Saturday afternoon, then off to a wedding.
Sunday we started getting everything ready to get this thing put together. We set up the work stands that will support the fuselage and placed the aft section in position. Next I placed the longerons next to the aft section. I have not notched them to fit around the F-711 bulkhead so I could not put them in place. Although the plans have you put them in first I will notch them tomorrow. I have not cut them to length yet either. All that tomorrow. Today I just wanted to double check the lengths of longerons.
I have read on other builder websites that removing the baggage skins made it easier to join two sections together. I removed both skins and it really made it much easier. Much easier is not an accurate statement. It took about an hour of moving, sliding, pushing and swearing before we finally got the two sections together. With the baggage skins on I doubt we would have ever got it together. Ultimately we managed to get it together. As I mentioned earlier, tomorrow I will finish the longerons and check them against the side skins.
