Something fun today—at least more fun than sanding the cowling. With the help of my spouse, we riveted the F872CPP-R right flap fairing to the fuselage. Nancy worked the gun and I got the honor of climbing inside the fuse for bucking duty. Since the flap fairing overlaps the skin, I cut a piece of .025 sheet which was taped to the skin and lined up with the edge of the flap fairing. This insured that the center of the gun could stay on the rivet and the rivet set could sit flat against the fuse/fairing. I had to drill out one rivet when the bar got off center and leanded the rivet over, but otherwise everything turned out well. For the bottom of the flap fairing I drilled the holes to #33 and used MK319-BS pop rivets. It was too cramped for Nancy to lay on the creeper and shoot upwards, so we elected pulled rivets. There were also 5 holes in the skin just above the fairing which I believe is used on the -8A for a step on the right side. We shot some NAS rivets for these holes. On the left side, I was able to reach thru the step hole cut out and use the squeezer for those rivets. The issue with the right side is that the skin overlap gets quite close to the rivet hole. I drew lines on the fuse to intersect the holes, then taped a piece of .025 scrap over the rivets. Nancy drove these while I bucked from the inside. This seemed to work out quite well. The forward most rivet is close to the overlap of the horizontal and vertical skin—had to drill out and shoot this one twice—had difficulty getting the bar square on it.
