Flight controls are finished for now, minus the fiberglass, so I'm pressing on with the tailcone. I'm extremely intimidated by the fiberglass process, so I'll tackle that one later.
The tailcone is a lot of large pieces and came together surprisingly quickly. Obviously I'm not priming, so that certainly was a huge time savings. First up is the bulkheads and also the first few divergences in the plans between the tail dragger and tricycle gear.
One of the biggest challenges is finding enough space to get the dimpling done on the larger sections of the tailcone. Once that's complete, sawhorses and a scrap table worked well for initial mock up of the bottom skin and the bulkheads.
Reminder, buy extra clecos. You will need them, as I did during this time of the build.
Some of the rivets in the aft bulkhead area are REALLY tough to reach and rivet cleanly. At this point in the build I wasn't using any protective tape over the end of the rivet gun. Although everything is structurally fine, the aesthetics on some of the manufactured heads leaves much to be desired. There are also a few smilies, but nothing too bad.
I had help during the build, and he was generally pretty excited during the process. You can see his sign of solidarity at this particular moment.
The plans called for temporary attachment of the vertical stabilizer so that some of the holes can be match drilled. That also requires the placement of the horizontal stab, resulting in these few pictures. It's pretty cliche in the builders communities, but "It's really starting to look like an airplane!"
Tailcone completed. Total time was 63 hours over about a month's time.
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