We've been doing the annual on our Cherokee the last few weeks so I haven't had much time to work on the RV.
As I started working on the baggage compartment floors I realized this and the seat pan area were getting ready to be sealed for good. I know I want to put at least one comm antenna on the belly, and probably two. That got me to looking at the floors, good spots, etc. While I was doing that I realized there was some unfinished business, namely the seat belt anchors, bolt/spacer where the rear spar will attach, and I also missed the rivets at the aft end of the outboard seat ribs. Went ahead and took care of those and final torqued the bolts.
Lousy shot, but it shows the seat rib that needed riveted and the attach bolt and spacer where the rear wing spar will install later.
As I was looking over the forward removable seat skins, I noticed I did not install nutplates on the outboard ribs (no idea why I decided to do that unless I misread the plans - I'd already done all the others when prepping the ribs originally). At any rate, I went ahead and did those.
After looking around at various RVs and thinking about how I wanted to do the antennas, I still haven't decided on my final plan, but I did decide to make the left baggage floor removable so that if I want to put an antenna in that area I will be able to. Turned out to be a lot of nutplates to do that, but I feel more comfortable having the option if I decide to go that way. I put a K1100-08 or a 21051-L08 nutplate at nearly every rivet location.
The right side F747-R baggage floor skin was installed conventionally. It takes about 10-15 minutes to do it this way, and I'd guess about 4 hours to do it so it is removable.
Left F747-L baggage floor after finishing all the nutplates and screwing it down about half way. Works great and I think I will be glad I did it this way.
Time to finish the aft baggage compartment wall/skins. The upper skin needs some work before it can be match drilled and installed. The top edges need to be radiused first. After looking at it and doing some measuring I concluded an 8" radius would be perfect. I poked around and found a 16" pie pan, made a paper template from it and quartered it. That will be my cutting template once I verify that it looks reasonable.
| The lower baggage compartment wall is more or less finished, just needs to be match drilled to the upper part of the F706 bulkhead. I'll start that once I get the top skin trimmed to shape. |
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