Airplane work is a bit slow at the moment. I'm facing a first dip in the build I guess.
I have been mainly working on the tail cone bulkheads lately. There is a lot of deburring work with tons of small notches and openings that all need to be cleaned nicely. Huge work with little visible progress. In the picture below, I'm deburring one of the halfs of the F707 bulkhead.
On all these bulkheads, you need to make a 5/8" whole for cabling (bottom) and the rudder cable passthrough (sides).
After carefull measuring, you can pilot drill the hole and then open it up with the step drill.
On the left side bulkhead, you also need to measure for a smaller snap bushing to be opened 7/16inch for a SB437-4 snap bushing. This busing will be used to pass the static air line to the front. The static ports are located around F-708 and need to pass through the tail cone and middle section to the instrument panel in the front.
All drilled
Static port passthrough drilled
To see at least a little bit of progress, I decided to mount all bulkheads on the tail cone floor plate. This will also give me a better understanding of the structure.
Next is F708, same 2 part bulkhead with the same procedure of drilling bushing holes, matchdrilling and static passthrough.
The flanges on this one were so bad and "off" that I decided to already flute them a bit.
This is still very premature as you can only to the final fluting and mating on these when actually matching the skins.
The static ports (that measure static air pressure) are located on the left and right side of the F-708 bulkhead. Two flexible air hosed will lead out of these ports and join somewhere on this bulkhead using a T-connector. To guide the air tube over the bulkhead, we will use some clamps. To attach these clamps, you need to drill these 1/8inch holes on the inside border of the bulkhead equally spaced at 3" 5/16.
I could do this later, but I figured it's more easy to drill them now than having to crawl in the tail cone to drill once the skin is installed.
Assembly picture with F-708 in place.
F-709 is very straightforward. It's only one piece. Just deburring and some fluting for now. This is almost the end of the turledeck.
F-710 has a bit more work to it.
The bulkhead itself only needs deburring, but the top of the bulkhead needs a custom made angle.
'Make From'... here we go again.
F710-B is very simple to make, just cut some angle to length, mark the tapering in and measure after deburring.
Then, mark a centerline on the angle and clamp it with the angle vertex flush with the web of F-710.
Backdrill throught he holes of F-710. Don't drill the top holes now ! This will be the place where the forward side of the horizontal stabilisor connects.
The full assembly picture with F-710 in place.
