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[June 14, 2007]


This morning I had to stick around the house for a few hours while Verizon installed my new FiOS fiber internet service. I gotta say, FiOS kicks ass over DSL! Anyways, while the installer was doing his thing I took care of leveling out the aft fuselage and drilling some nutplate holes on the crotch belt brackets on the center fuselage.

My dad came over tonight again to donate some more riveting time in exchange for a tasty dinner. In about 2.5 hours we banged out everything forward of the F-710 bulkhead. I worked inside the aft fuselage bucking the rivets and my dad worked the hard labor by shooting rivets, placing rivets and removing clecoes. The only issue I ran into was every rivet that goes through the F-779 aft bottom skin needs to be upsized 1/2 size. I was a little concerned where the skins overlapped because their was a 1/32 - 1/64" gap where the clecoes just couldn't pull the skins together with enough force, even with the edges slightly bent. However, I was worried about nothing - as soon as it got riveted together everything is pulled very tight and the overlaps look outstanding.


After studying the rivet callout diagram, I think you are supposed to leave out these three rivets because the forward skin overlaps here.


I flipped the aft fuse on its side so I could shoot the remaining rivets by myself. It was a piece of cake to shoot these last few rows of rivets solo. I couldn't get the rivet that is pointed out because the bucking bar interfered with the nut that holds the tailwheel bracket to the F-711.


Here is the interfering nut.


Off it came and the last rivet got bucked. Sucks I have to throw out these perfectly good nuts and bolts.

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Last Modified: August 13, 2023