Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Aft Stabilator Cables & Turtle Deck In Place

First order of business for the day yesterday was to pull the two F-1247B aft stabilator cables through the tailcone. A pleasant change … no hitches. The aft stabilator  cables will mate up with the forward stabilator cables under the baggage floor just aft of the center channel and a threaded barrel will connect the threaded ends on both cables creating a tension adjustment point. Using the strings that were installed early on during tailcone construction, it was quite an easy task to pull the cables back through the aft bulkhead and into the tailcone. I laid a drill on top of the cables to create a back drag so the cables stayed elevated while being pulled aft over the frames in the tailcone.
One of the two F-1247B aft stabilator cables about to be installed.

To prevent the clevis end of the cable from falling back into the tailcone, a long wire tie folded back on itself and placed through the bolt hole. The wire ties should keep the cable in place until the stabilator is installed later.
Wire ties used to prevent the stabilator cables from pulling back into the tailcone assembly.

It appears easy access into the tailcone is no longer needed for construction purposes, so decided to secure the F-1277 turtle decks onto fuselage and tailcone with Clecos.

Return from the future: Builders working alone may want to hold off and install the turtle deck skins after the gear legs have been installed ... it will be much easier to reach inside to tighten the nuts and bolts especially if you do not have a long reach.
Securing the right F-1277 turtle deck onto the tailcone with Clecos.
Both F-1277 turtle decks secured with Clecos onto the tailcone and fuselage.

After the left and right turtle decks were in place, the F-1277A aft window was positioned in place and slowly bent to conform to the shape of the turtle deck. There are predrilled holes along the outer edges of the window and after quite a bit of patient finessing, was able to get the holes in the window to match up with the holes in the left and right turtle decks so the window could be secured with #30 Clecos. A nail set was gingerly used to tweak the alignment so the next rivet hole would begin to line up.
Gingerely using a nail punch to help align holes while placing Clecos into the next hole ... not a practice I can recommend - but it worked. This became a back and forth process but now the F-1277A aft window in place and ready for match drilling the roll bar.

With the rear window in place, there will be lots of drilling on the horizon. Some really warm afternoon when it is 85 or 90 degrees in the hangar the holes in the forward edge of the window will be used to match drill the roll bar. Then the window will be removed and all holes final drilled to #27 using a special Plexiglass drill bit so screws will fit through the holes to mount the window. The many newly created holes in the roll bar will be tapped for 6-32 hardware.

The remainder of the work session was spent adding nut plates to small items that will be installed later.