Today, it was time to prepare the rear fuselage floor. After removing the foil, we used a orbital sander with an attached scotch brite pad to prepare the surface. Once the surface is prepared on both sides, the inner side is cleaned and primed. The outer side will be painted at a later stage. Once the primer dried, the longerons are fitted and attached to the skins with clecos. Finally, the clecos are replaced by the blind rivets....
To better fit the skin of the parachute cover, ribs 3 and 2 need to have a bunch of holes dimpled. For dimpling we use the DRDT-2 from ExperimentalAero. We dimpled the parts prior to cleaning and priming to have a better fitting of the primer. After some more cleaning and priming, the parts came together quite nicley. We did not have any issues with rib 3 but with rib 2 as the construction manual shows 4x 3....
During the last days, we took quite some time to prepare, prime and rivet the next bunch of ribs. Starting with rib 6 which includes some parts sliding through a slot of other parts. Besides the construction manual only showing 7 rivets to connect the parts 1 and 4 after sliding the parts together, we shot rivets in all 9 holes. The next step would be to combine the first set of ribs together....
Today, I took the time to clean, prime and cleco the first two ribs together. As the parts for rib 9 are still on backorder, I started with ribs 8 and 7. I use 3M Scotch-Brite Pads (red) to prepare the surface for priming. Once the surface is a brushed, I use Aceton to clean of any grease traces. As soon as the parts are dry and the Aceton is vaporized, I apply FINIXA Etch Primer to the parts....