8/26/2012 Bottom of Fuselage Connected

This was a busy day for me.  I located and drilled the locations for the pedals on the cabin floor.

I had to trim the left side pedal bearing to allow it to fit in the pedal channel while keeping the pedal shaft parallel to the channel.  This doesn't leave a lot of room for the bolt hole.  Hopefully I can still fit it in while maintaining an appropriate edge distance.

Then I added the seat back and gear channel, after trimming for the difference in width between the cabin floor and the forward edge of the bottom skin.

Used the laser to line up the cabin floor with the rear fuselage.  The laser is a lot more convenient than a chalk line.

Then I positioned and drilled the center spar on the cabin floor.  Only one set of holes was pre-drilled, while from the drawings and the homebuilt help video I expected two lines of holes.  I located and drilled a forward rivet line 55 mm forward of the line of pre-drilled holes, as indicated by the plans. Seemed to hit the center of the flange on the center spar, so that was comforting.  Anyway, here's what the bottom of the plane looks like now:

I ended this busy day by starting on the firewall.  It was cool to find that there were pre-drilled holes both in the firewall and the top stiffener, so it was already match-drilled.  Hoping to get more done on the firewall with my son helping tomorrow.