A long day in the workshop today in an attempt to cross off some more lines in the finishing checklist before priming.

First started with drilling the seat pans to the F-715 outer seat ribs.
The plans call for 0.032" spacing between the edge of the seat pan and the F-770 side skin.

I used small scrap 0.032" gauge parts to sit between skin and seat and used that for drilling the first holes.
I had to trim away some of the sides near the front and back to fit nicely.

 Once the first holes were drilled, removed the side skin and continued drilling just with a smaller piece clamped to simulate the side skin. This make drilling easier than with the side skin on.

I could drill now with a regular dril instead of with the angle drill.

Side rib right side completed.

Repeated the process for the left side.

 Next, drilled the nutplate leg holes on the 3 forward most holes. These will take K1000-08 nutplates for a AN515-8R8 screw.

One problem though... the bottom one sits too close to the edge so edge distance on the bottom leg is not good as you can see in the picture below.

 I decided to change this to a one leg MS21051-L08 nutplate which makes the fit much nicer. Probably just esthitic but I prefer it this way.

Both F-715 ribs deburred and nutplate ear #40 holes dimpled.

Second task of the day was continuing to disassemble the fuselage and trim away some material from the aft side of the F-727-L baggage rib for the bushing that will serve as wiring pass-through.
I'm also planning on running some conduit through the baggage floor so probably this is not necessary but better safe then sorry. It would be hard to do this once the fuselage is rivetted together so decided to make this hole anyway.

First used a grinder bit on the dremmel tool and finished it of with a key file.

Third task of the day: fixing some mess up of a previous session on the F-7101 and F-902-R bulkhead joint.
I had a bit of problems earlier with the F-7101s and had to replace F-713-R and F-7101 because of edge distance issues.

All was fine after remaking them but when drilling F-7101 on F-902-R, I made a 8 - hole (holes not aligned and inside each other on the top hole of F-902-R.

At that point I drilled a hole above and below this 8-hole.
I could leave the 8-hole unrivetted but it would not look nice so decided to fill it with a rivet later.
But filling a 8-hole would not work as the rivet while setting would run away to the open side so I decided to make a doubler for the front side of the F-902-R.
That way, the 8 hole is squeezed in between the doubler and the F-7101 and it will be possible to put a rivet in.

First made the small doubler and then matchdrilled it using F-7101 as a template as this contains the correct holes.

 Then tested it by clecoing the F-902-R in place between the F-7101 and my doubler.

Fourth task: drilled the 1/4" hole in de F-773-L and R skin for the static port.

I am using the safeair static kit instead of Van's ports so the measuring on the plans did not work for me.

In detail E on plan DWG 28, it is specified to drill at 2" from the top row of rivets at the longeron and 11/16" in front of the vertical row at F-708.

That would position the hole where the little black cross is. Installing the safeair static port on the inside would interfere with the flange of the F-708 so I decided to move it more forward so that the port clears the flange.

Drilled a pilot hole #40.

From there up-drilled with a step drill and finished the last step with a 1/4" reamer for a perfect cut. I recently purchase some step-up drills and reamers from PAN-AM and I would recommend those to everyone. Really nice stuff, I will post some pictures of them in a later article.

Test fitted the static port in the hole and it really looks nice !

End of a productive day. Getting very close to priming now.