Forward Fuselage - Top Skin L-angles, cont. part 2 ~ Riveting Aviatrix

10FEB2024

Tom came with me to the hangar to help out with drilling the top skin l-angles. There isn't a way to clamp the l-angles, so definitely a two person job. Since I fit in the opening where the side skin goes, I held the l-angles in place underneath while Tom matched drilled them from the top. This worked out really well and was way easier then the first one I did myself.

The left most l-angle ended up sitting right on a crimp in the firewall, so I installed this angle with the bend opposite what the drawing says. I also had to trim quite a bit off the angle to get around the firewall crimp.

Last weekend, I was having trouble with the strut attachment, so Tom looked at that with me too. My gear channel opening is 154mm, but the strut attachment is 157mm. It doesn't seem like a lot, but the attachment definitely will not fit. We were really pushing on it and it was close, but we also saw that holes in my strut attachments do not line up with the holes in the cabin side, they're off by almost a full hole. I have an email out to Zenith, so we'll see what they say about this.