June 9th, 2013

Sad week last week. My sister in law's father, John D Hall, USAF retired, passed away May 31st. He was a pilot and Vietnam Veteran with over 750 combat hours in an OV-10 Bronco. He is survived by Linda, his wife of 47 years, 4 brothers and sisters, 4 children, Heidi, John, Jason and Jeff, and 5 grandchildren. We'll miss you John.


 This week I started on the F751 and F652 bulkheads. These are the corrugated vertical panels that cover the back of the baggage compartment. When I was first looking at it and measuring the drawings, it seemed like an 8" radius circle would be about perfect for cutting the upper edge of the F652 bulkhead.

From Fuselage

I often read and look over the plans while eating lunch, and I noticed on one sheet that Van's specified a radius for the cut which I'd overlooked the first time. I'd already laid out the curve from my template, so I made a simple 8 1/2" radius trammel for my sharpie pen to compare them.

From Fuselage

The difference in the curve was so small (especially with the difficulty of getting a decent curve inside the corrugations) that I ended up using the line I'd already drawn. Once I had the curves cut and finished, I clamped & clecoed it into the fuse to make sure it all fit and there was sufficient edge distance all around for the nutplates.

From Fuselage