Wings Removed, Front Deck Priming – 8 hrs

Saturday Mar 3, 2012

Today was a pretty good day on the project. I got all the front deck parts prepared and primed for final assembly and I got the wings removed from the fuselage. But I get ahead of myself.

The front deck is a bit tricky because it was not designed for modern glass cockpit EFIS displays. There is a main support for the instrument panel that falls right where the primary flight display needs to be. I won’t be installing components in the panel for a while but I need to assemble the front deck structure now. I did some research on the web and learned that most builders cut off the left F-745 rib at the sub-panel and relocate the forward part to the left or right of the PFD. At the moment I am planning a 10- inch Skyview display on the pilot’s side and a 7-inch display on the co-pilot side as back-up – something like the figure below.

Click to enlarge image.

The existing F-745 rib on the left falls right in the middle of the Skyview so that one will clearly need to be relocated. I cut the rib at the sub-panel as shown below. The right rib can probably be adapted to work below the 7-inch Skyview so I left that rib alone for now.

I clecoed the front deck structure back together to make sure the cut was good and as you can see below, the forward section of the F-745 is now available to be relocated.

I spent the next hour or two deburring, scuffing, and dimpling the rest of the front deck parts to get ready for priming. There is quite a good size pile of parts.I also had the two wing root fairings (not shown).

A couple hours later I had the parts cleaned, dried, and primed using good ole Stewart Systems Ekoprime.

This photo is the front deck skin primed along the ribs on the inside surface.

Since I recently finished fitting the wing root fairings I was able to finally take the wings back off the fuselage. I have been anxious to do this because it has been such a pain maneuvering myself in the garage with wings going almost all the way from one wall to the other. It has also been hard working on anything inside the cockpit while reaching over the wings. So I was able to get the help of Denise and Jennifer to remove both wings and put them back on the cradle. That is probably the last time they will be on the fuselage until I move this project to the airport for final preparation for first flight.

It’s really nice to be able to walk around the fuselage without squeezing through the narrow confines around the wings.

Late in the day I was actually able to start riveting a few parts of the front deck together. Here is the center sub-panel with the hat section, stub ribs and forward center rib. Update: I learned about six week later that I should not have riveted the hat section to the subpanel yet. The plans don’t say it but you need to install some nut plates in the hat section for the canopy release mechanism and it is much easier to do that before riveting the hat section to the subpanel.

And here are the left and right outboard sections of the sub-panel with the seal strips riveted on.