No progress last week while I was away for a work trip. After I got back, Ellen and I started riveting the tailcone bulkheads to the belly skins. Also clecoed the center section together for the first time. Cool!

Did a little trimming of the F-705 seat belt anchors to fit around the seat ribs. Sorry, no pics.

I made up for the lack of progress in April by hitting the ground running in May. With the able assistance of Dave Rogers to get some hard-to-rivet spots done on the aft tailcone.

I also riveted the pitch servo bracket in place, then clecoed the tailcone structure together.

One gotcha…when everything was clecoed in place, a gap opened up between the tailwheel spring aft flange and the bulkhead. May have to fabricate a spacer to go in there.

My project work and picture-taking have been lame for the past three weeks, so use your imagination to visualize me riveting the F-705 bulkhead together, and starting to rivet the lower tailcone skin to the F-711 and F-712 bulkheads.

Finished priming tailcone and F-705 bulkhead parts today. Too busy to take pictures of the process, how about a nice airplane picture instead?

I finished the airplane today!

With the obligatory April Fools joke is out of the way, I started the month by marking and trimming aileron pushrod cutouts on the F-716 seat ribs, and fabricating all the little gizmos that secure the cutouts.

March has been wicked busy with family stuff and work, so the airplane has taken a back seat. I’ve been intermittently working on deburring, dimpling, prepping and priming all the tailcone parts for riveting. It’s almost warm enough in Boston to prime!

Disassembled tailcone for deburring, dimpling, priming and riveting. No pictures yet of that process, but I did take one as I enlarged the hole that provides access for the tailwheel spring attach bolt.

Finished match-drilling the tailcone skins today. Cool.

A couple of days of big progress. Now over the flu, I tweaked the bend on the replacement F-779 lower tailcone skin, got the F-711 and F-712 bulkheads attached, and clecoced the whole structure into the tailcone. The -779 is one of those areas on the RV with notoriously bad fit, so getting this done was a Big Deal.