Today, I begun by drilling the forward skin; Quite a lot of holes on the firewall side and on the ribes that have to be positionned correctly before drilling.



Then I fabricated the brackets for the fresh air vents(hot air will come through the firewall from the engine compartment). I'm not using Van's vents (on the right in the picture), but aluminium vents I bought from Steinair.



Here one of the brackets and on the left with the vent installed.



And here the panel installation. All in all a lot of time and fiddling before this result.

No picture today, but one hour to fabricate some angles needed for the instrument panel and the fresh air vents.

The front deck is the part of the cabin between the instrument panel and the firewall. The instrument panel is normally bolted to two ribs and all the structure is rigidified via a three part subpanel. The first job is to cut and drill a few small angles. Here are two on the right side.



Then three length of small aluminium have to be cut, they will be riveted to the subpanels. They will be used to insert a seal between the canopy and the subpane.



her a picture of the angle on the sub panel



At the rear of the instrument panel an aluminium angle has to be riveted. This rather thick angle has to be cut and bended to conform the contour of the panel. I still have all the deburring to do!!!!!!



Here the upper skin is just installed to see the fit, I'll have to roll it a bit.

Again some work on the cabin frame. The holes facing outside on the angles get countersunk, the forward holes are then tapped. The forward screws are holding the skin and frame to the angle while the back ones will be hidden beahind the skin. Putting the nuts on the back screws proved to be quite a challenge.



Then two holes have to be drilled on the inner part of the angle as two bolts will be used there.



All has now to be taken apart to drill the frame to the right size and coutersink all the holes. This poses some problems on the rounded parts ans some holes have to be done without the cage. The forward part will be riveted with the usual rivets, but the rear part will be done with pop rivets as the back side of the holes will be inaccessible.

The installation of the support angle on the fuselage requires some thinking to take the measurments. Here is my setup. Once everything is clamped, the drilling is done in incremental steps to 1/4".



After the frame is installed, the upper brace is clecoed in position and all the drilling is done.



After a last height adjustement of the frame (my cut last time was a bit shy), I drilled the frame to the support angle. I still have to drill the inner holes and countersink where it is needed.