This week I began assembling the fuselage. I’ve built the jig and temporary firewall, and am now attaching the bulkheads. I’m doing them one at a time. I trial fit everything first and found the only adjustment needed was to trim the corners of he front seat to match the contour of the molding on the sides near the longerons.

I also chose to make a smaller center support. The plans suggested using a 2×10. I had a very straight 1×5 laying around, so I built some “wings” on it to provide some lateral support. It works great and doesn’t chew up as much floor space in my tiny shop.

Here’s a pic:

This week I finished the fuselage sides. This weekend we’re starting the fuselage assembly. My plan is to glass he bulkheads as they’re needed in chapter 6, so I can cut the foam to make sure everything fits before glassing. Not sure it’ll make a big difference, but I think it might save some sanding.

I’ve also made my temp firewall and frame to hold everything together. Pics to come.

Today Karina and I laid up the interior sides of the fuselage. The past couple of weeks were spent shaping the foam leading up to this layup. For the jig I used some old pine boards in my lumber loft, and, instead of Masonite as mentioned in the plans, I used some stiff foam board I found on sale at Michaels. I did this because the local home improvement store was out of Masonite. The foam board worked great and was very easy to work with. It was also only $4 for the whole jig!

The fuselage sides are exact to the plans, except I made the round indentions for the control stick slightly oversized.

Today I laid up F28 and the longerons. I did these two first because I don’t have enough BID to do any of the other bulkheads. Also, I’m going to vacuum bag most of the bulkheads, and since this one is small I could do it without giving up much weight. It’s also not particularly visible in the finished plane, so I felt like if I made a mess of it with my first layup of the plane, I wouldn’t see it in the end.

With the longeron, I found it really easy to hold against the jigs. some other builders had mentioned needing multiple clamps, but mine only needed the two pictured here. I also put a few weights (buckets of concrete) to hold the plywood flat. I put a few screws in to hold the longerons in place, but in the end they weren’t necessary.

Here’s the longerons:

And here’s F28:

Today I’m preparing the foam cores for the bulkheads. Here’s the front seatback:

and here’s F22 with a doubler. In the plans it said to put this together in several pieces and glue them together, but I was able to cut it in just 2 pieces.