Fuselage

Today I finally got around to working on the crotch strap brackets. Recall that I picked up the kit from Vans a few days ago. Now it's time to see how all of this goes together. My friend Uday came over again today, and we worked on this together.

Following the directions carefully, I measured and drew a vertical line on each rib where the aft bracket attaches. It's clamped in place and drilled to the ribs. Then a spacer is clamped in place with the forward bracket, and it gets drilled to the ribs as well. The top flanges are made flush with the rib flanges, so the seat pan sits on all these surfaces.

I will be installing nutplates on the top flanges, and one of the two pilot holes seen below the big square opening will be enlarged to hold the bolt and nut that will eventually hold the crotch strap bracket in place. I may wait on drilling those, until I know for sure what kind of belt I will have, and where the bolt will hold it to this assembly.

This whole process was repeated for the other seat. I don't have a picture of it, but next I clecoed this assembly back on to the bulkheads and bottom skin to make sure everything fits okay. I wanted to make sure the rib spacing was okay before I prime and rivet this stuff together. It all fits like a glove. I put the seat pans on too. Sure enough, the brackets are dead-center in the opening where the crotch strap belts will come up through. Great!

Finally today, I got out my soldering iron and long ruler and started removing vinyl strips from the bottom skin. All the prep work is ahead of me for the center section parts. When the vinyl strips were removed, I started deburring all the holes in the skin. I got one side finished.

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