Baggage compartment details
Progress has continued during the past week on finishing up the baggage compartment and various other things. I went ahead and riveted on the bulkhead gussets in the aft fuselage. I didn’t see any reason to wait. I also finished up the rear baggage wall with its seat belt anchor bushing blocks. After I removed the aft top skins, I went ahead and dimpled the skins and the bulkheads. They are ready to be riveted much later, so they’re put away for now. Tanya put in the conduit that I had planned for under the baggage floors and I tied them down with some adel clamps. Oh, yeah, I am putting down 1/4″ soundproofing material on the floors. All of the baggage wall nutplates are installed as well.
Alright, one might ask what I’m doing messing with elevator pushrod and control assembly and a COM antenna! I have a confession to make. I had a little bucking bar accident a couple of weeks back where I dropped a 2lb. bucking bar with sharp ends dead center of bottom skin in the baggage compartment. It was certainly one of those very slow motion horror movie moments as the bucking bar rolled right out of my grip from a little more than two feet up. I stood there in shock for what seemed like five minutes while my brain caught up with what had just happened. As I snapped back to reality, time for analysis. Yep, dead center of the tunnel, yep, that was a sharp bucking bar, it didn’t just leave a mongo dent, it fully punctured the skin on close inspection. Holy cow, it didn’t just hit once, but twice. It didn’t take long for me to conclude that the damage area is almost exactly the size of a BNC connector on an antenna. The only problem with this location for the antenna for COM1 is the limited clearance between the skin and the elevator pushrod. The next day, I ordered the antenna and some right angle connectors to see what kind of clearance would be needed. I got out the pushrod and prepared the rod ends and roughly assembled the control assembly back to the bellcrank. This was the moment to truth (note that many days had passed at this point. Plenty of time for me to fret over the issue at hand). The verdict is that there is plenty of clearance at this location for an antenna and the connector. I will just take care to carefully secure the wire. So, I completed the antenna install and all is well. I’ll put a simple little sheet metal patch on the other dent that I drilled out.
It is the Christmas holiday now and I’m taking a week off of real work to do my favorite thing, build.
