Fuselage 5

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Back to Building Progress

Back to Fuselage 4

Time to reorganize the garage.  The wing stand finally came down, and I moved the fuselage so that the firewall side is under the big lights.  This helped open up a lot of space in the garage.

Here's a shot of my new best friend.  I froze last year, and don't know why I didn't buy this sooner.

Here's a shot of the interior with all of the painted panels back in place.  You can see how the panel attaches to the two "ribs" on the tip-up version that can cause interference with the instruments.  (the subpanel is not in place in this photo)

Since I'm planning on installing a Blue Mountain EFIS/One in my panel, I need to modify the attach point to accommodate the 10" screen.  I'm building a kind of "bridge" out of aluminum angle that will go around the 2" deep screen.

Here's the reverse angle, without the rib portion cut away yet.

Here it is with the rib cut away.  The EFIS screen should fit under here just fine.  I'll prime, paint, and rivet this together, and the bottom piece will be removable using nutplates and screws.

(jump to the EFIS install pages to see the rest of this installation)

While I wait for the finish kit, I figured I should go ahead and mount the Horizontal and Vertical stabilizer, and fit the elevator pushrod.  Here's a shot mid-project with the elevators attached.

This is how the forward spar of the horizontal stabilizer attaches to the fuselage.

And the rear spar.

The empennage fully in place.  I think I'll leave it on and fit the fiberglass fairing before I take it all apart and start working on the canopy and engine.

I worked on the fiberglass empennage fairing for a while.  It fit pretty well, considering some of the horror stories I've heard about the RV6 fairing.

I spent quite a bit of time with an electric detail sander rounding all the edges.

I used a heat gun to soften one area and make the fiberglass wrap tighter around the leading edge.

I measured a screw from the indicated bag of parts before selecting a drill bit and drilling all of the holes.  I then realized that I had just drilled about 30 holes of the wrong size (too big) in a part I just spent 6 hours sanding to fit!  I'll just use some countersunk washers to correct this, but next time will check twice before drilling into a part that took so long to get in shape!

The area under the bottom of the horizontal stabilizer is filled with a piece of aluminum shown here.  I tried using the rubber strip shown in the plans but don't think it works very well.  I'll just leave a very small gap instead.