Success! Got the new F-779 skin today, and it fits significantly better than the old one. I was able to get the F-711 and -712 bulkheads clecoed in with little or no force. Very cool.

I was so pumped to be over yet another hurdle that I decided to cleco the whole aft fuselage together. This process really needs two sets of hands, since the first step is to cleco the bulkheads to the fuselage aft bottom skin, then lay the j-channels in their respective cutouts in the bulkheads…

…and once the bulkheads were in place, the side skins went on. For the most part, this was an easy process – very little work required to get holes lined up. It was a nice change from all the heartache with that lower tailcone skin.

This was a pretty motivational day, it’s nice to see a big part of the airplane starting to come together.