Last week Brigitta made a set of the nose bulkheads, and also a set of the wheel well boxes. She also made the saddles for a fuselage dolly and a tail dolly, and got a good start on the plug for the pneumatic tailwheel exterior fairing.
Over the weekend I trimmed the wheel well boxes and did some fitting, although I didn't start bonding them in. For this aircraft at least, I want to bond the gear well boxes in while the fuselage is in the molds. That's so that it will fit back in with the boxes in place, and also so that I can develop a set of steel weldments that can be used to locate and install the wheel well bulkheads while the fuselage is on the half-shell.
Next weekend, if the casters arrive from McMaster, I'm going to weld up three retracting casters on each of the fuselage molds. You'll just flip a lever at each corner to raise or lower the caster. That will make it much, much easier to move the fuselage molds around in the shop and between the shop bays.
page updated 6 February 2006 all text and graphics copyright (c) 2006 HP Aircraft, LLC