Rear fuselage rib assembly

TLDR

• Installed longerons to bottom skin
• Installed rear fuselage ribs and longerons
• Partially installed the side step support brackets and channels

Details

Bottom skin & longerons

This part is easy. Lots of rivets to go through though.

I clecoed the longerons to the skin, and inserted all rivets. I did not need to match drill anything at this stage.

Clecoed longerons to bottom skin

And riveted

Rear bulkhead to the skin

Installing the rear bulkhead to the skin was a little tricky. One row of holes did not line up (The connection between longeron 8 and the rib,see picture)

The hole where I’m pointing does not line up

It turns out it’s because the rib is slightly too wide on the edge, and it’s push against the longeron. So I cut off about 2 mm of the rib where I’m pointing in the picture, and everything lines up perfectly.

Ribs

Ribs clecoed

Aftter the rearmost piece, I clecoed the rest of the ribs onto the skin. It’s starting to look like an airplane!

Riveted ribs to the skin

Step support

Incorrect parts

On RF-ASS-001-C-C-0-A-A-1, I am supposed to have 2 gussets to secure the rib 4 to the bottom longeron on both sides. The two gussets are supposed to be symetrical, but I got 2 identical parts. The right side works perfectly, but the left side doesn’t fit at all.

So I sent an email to Sling, and they are working on locating a replacement part for me. For now, I’m not able to finish the gussets on the bottom skin. I went ahead and did the right side, and left the left side alone waiting for parts.

Identical gussets, but they are supposed to be symetrical instead

Installed on the right side only

Steel rivets

One note is that 26 rivets on both sides securing the rib and longeron need to be steel rivets instead of the common aluminum ones. So I dipped them in Tef-gel before shooting. You can see from the picture above there are some white stuff around rivets, that’s the tef-gel.

Brackets between longerons

As I have gone half way through riveting a bracket to the longeron, I realized the corner of the bracket is touching the longeron.

The lower corner touches the longeron below it

I’m not happy about this, so I think I will unrivet the bracket and file off the corner just a little bit so they never touch each other during fly.