Started initial fitting of the Aft Fusalage - 5 hours

One of the items that I didn't fully complete was finish cutting the J-stiffeners. It's not entirely clear from the plans and manual if J-stiffeners cut trimmed on each ends. Also, I'm leery to cut the J-stiffeners to length as per the plans or should I be leaving them long for best bit. Once I started lining things up, I could see that I did in fact need to trim both ends of A,B, and C stiffeners per the detail on the plans and also that the length stated on the plans is bang on.

Update - For the notch that gets cut into the ends of the J-Stiffners (as detailed on the plans), Notch both ends of the two longest stiffeners. The shortest J-Stiffener that goes on the top only gets notched on one end. Really, in order to assembly the aft fuselage you only need to cut and notch the two sets of longest J-channels. So you can always leave the 3rd (short) set till much later.

After marking the ends per the plans, I rough cut them on the band saw and then using the 3M wheel they were easily shaped to final form.

Next I began a lose fit of the F-712,  F-711 and F-710 bulkheads to the F-779 tail bottom skin. I knew from reading the various blogs that the bottom skin needed some TLC to fit the bulkheads better. It was easy to see how off it is.


I could also see how I needed to angle the flanges on the bulkhead. Yup, lots of adjustment needed.

I decided to hand bend the F-779 bottom skin, I took my time and slowly worked at it.


I finished up the day with clecoing the Aft fuselage to check fit.