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Hi Darick. I remember you posting about the upper crosstie box being slightly too long and needed a small amount of trimming to clear the vertical splice plate. I too had to do the same thing. I also had a snafu with my lower #1 crosstie that came in the kit in that the lower flange for the bottom skin and crosstie box horizontal splice plate were already upsized to 1/8", Sonex sent me a new one that wasn't.

Area 51%. My #5 former has the cut out, so I'll see how that goes when the turtle deck is started. My F22-06 angle fit very good, it did have a slight misalignment of matched holes with the #5 verticals as you described, but, they weren't affected after upsizing to 1/8" which left a clean hole for riveting.

I got into a spurt today, dis-assembled the tail cone assembly and have started deburring.


Pile "O" parts again.

Happy new year!

The entire tail cone box has been deburred and ready for reassembly and riveting.

Since then, temps are brutal again, -17 and lower with wind chill as usual, makes it hard to get motivated to warm up the garage from O to roughly 40 degree's for work spurts! The thing about ND winters is that when it warms up above O, it is warm enough for snow and blizzards, like we just had! After the front passes, the arctic blast is right behind it and back to sub zero temps.. BRRRR.

I am currently on the turtle deck plans pages, had the skins polished awhile back, then riveted the splice channel assembly. Upsized the skins / splice channel and deburred, it is ready for riveting as well. Bent the forward attach plates and now currently finishing the edge cleaning of all the turtle deck formers.

While doing this, I'll need to figure out a good build sequence as a lot of big parts are going to come together quickly in a tight garage on a 4x12 build table. The immediate challenge is access for the turtle deck and former install once the tail cone basic box is riveted. Re-configuring the garage in the dead of winter could be brutal!

Ken, I keep following your progress…looks good…how big is your garage? I have a 20 x 20 two car but I built in only "my half", the other I promised to keep for Donna's car. That worked out good until the very end when I completed the canopy and cowl. Luckily it was summer and she didn't mind her car being outside for the warm months.

Bottom line, I was able to build the whole thing in a single size car space, except for the canopy and cowl.

Happy building!

Hi Darick, thanks for following. I am limited to a 12 x 22 single stall garage!

I have a plan that should work by taking the 4' extension off and moving the table to the front of the garage. That should give me enough room to rivet the entire tail cone assembly on saw horses with enough room to crawl around for the turtle deck install.

Meanwhile, the turtle deck formers are all done. Down to reorganizing and a massive riveting session!

Great progress today, finally! We are in a heat wave, almost 40 degree's and sun shine today. I had previously reorganized the garage yesterday and cleco'd the aft fuse up on sawhorses. Today was rivet day and finished it up as far as I wanted to go. Leaving the upper longerons, cross ties and seat belt assemblies cleco'd so I can remove them for deburring once the turtledeck is upsized.


New open space!


BRRR, time for riveting


All ready for the turtledeck install

Looking good Ken.

I took a chance and am building what I can in the basement. I have the aft fuselage done and just waiting for a replacement flap drive tube from Sonex. They supplied a legacy one instead of one for my "B" model. I have my turtle deck ready for install but since I have to fish this thing up the stairwell this spring, the install will have to wait. I test flew it up the steps when it was clecoed and it just barely fit. I have all the smaller pieces built and am hoping it takes the shape of an airplane by the end of summer.

That looks great Gregg.
I built a lot of smaller sub-assemblies in the basement as well. I still have the completed tail group and flight controls stored down below. In anticipation of a space crunch, I built the forward fuse sides, firewall pieces and turtle deck before having to lose space / move the garage around for the fuselage build. Of course, all the polishing had a lot to do with it too.
Keep up the good work.

Another productive day. Pulled out my turtledeck skins and channel from the basement and riveted the assembly together. With the help of a friend, slipped the left side and right sides in at the same time and piloted to the longerons. I thought it went quite well despite the slight bulging out of the side skins that went away once tacked down with cleco's.

After inspecting everything, I noticed the right front corner somehow slipped a little lower than an inch, about 1/16". The other three corners are where they are supposed to be. I was also puzzled that the skin was protruding a little past the lower longeron edges, midway down even though they are at an inch on the corners. I remember all 4 stock longerons were a little wavy / twisted as delivered in the kit, I just positioned them as needed to maintain the straight edge of the skins.

The assembly looks nice and square with no ripples and the lower fuse is still nice and square resting on the sawhorses at this point. We shall see if there will be any trouble as I start to install all the formers.

Looks good Ken!

Ken, I remember when I got to the stage of riveting the formers to the turtleneck, there was, what I thought, to be too much space between the two. So I added small shims at those places, so the rivet would not pull down excessively and make a big dimple. The shims were not that thick, maybe .025 or .035 , definitely not more .062.