Brief Description: Sam and I work of the center section
Sam Beale came over to help me with the center section. It was good to have an engineer on board, because he can look at the drawings and see things in two minutes that I did not see after studying the drawings for hours. We fabricated two more angle braces which we then drilled to the center section aft web. Then we put them aside for installation much later in construction. Next, we drilled and riveted on nutplates for the fuel line clamps to the forward web and two nut plates on the top cap. Finally, we started to fit the landing gear weldments to the center section. Since this is an RV-8A, it has a tricycle landing gear and the main gear weldments (the steel fittings that hold the main landing gear legs) are bolted to the center section. First, however, you have to do a lott of filing and fiddling to get the weldments to fit the holes in the center section. You also have to file down a little of the flange on the bottom of the center section so that the tubes holding the landing gear legs will not contact it. Using a dremel tool helped immensly. There is still a lot of fitting to do for the weldment legs.
Sam setting rivets for a nutplate
This is where we filed away the flange that came into contact with the tube on the gear weldment
Landing gear weldments trial fitted to the front of the forward center section
