Big day today. Fully assembled the forward top fuselage structure and clecoed the F-7106 forward top skin in place.
Matchdrilling time. This is all very easy and not much to worry about. Most are drilled using the reamer, the row in front is drilled in assembly with the firwall.
Alain came out to help me drill the forward parts. There are two angles on the inside behind the instrument panel (F-7103C-L and R).
These need to be aliged with the prepunched holes in te skin. First drew a centerline on the top side of the angle and aigned it with the holes in the skin.
Then drilled one by one as Alain was holding them in place. There's no way you can get clamps in there to hold things in place so 2 pair of hands are needed to complete this task.
The front of these angles will get nutplates which hold the instrument panel in place.
Next we made and positioned F-721C and F-721D attach angles. these are drilled to the forward canopy decks and are also used to keep the instrument panel secured and in place.
Also drilled the F-7103B-L and R attach angle strips. Lot's of work went into deburring these funky parts.
All match drilling finished, it looks kind of cool seeing the instrument panel in for the first time.
The next days, spend a lot of time went into hole-deburring all parts and skin and dimpling all the parts. Only some parts need countersinking like the two stiffer angles on the left and right side fwd canopy decks.