While waiting for my new aft fuselage F5 former from Sonex, I decided to commence the forward fuselage. I figured I’d just fabricate as much as I can in the time it takes to get the new former. Well, the parts made from extrusion are not hard, just a little time consuming. I managed to screw up one small part, but had enough in reserve to make another one. Being on vacation meant I had heaps of time to do this, and in no time I was ready to make up the forward fuse sides. 

One area I needed help with was bending the aluminium extrusion angle for the forward and aft wing attachment pieces. They are all in excess of 20 inches long and need to be either opened up to 93.9 degrees or closed to 86.1. My bench vice wasn’t up to the task, so I gave them to an engineering shop here in Canberra who bent them to the required specs and charged me $30.00 (that’s about a buck fifty US – only joking!!). One of the angles wasn’t quite right, but I was able to fine tune it in my vice. Also, I had to run the vixen file over the back face to take out a bit of a curve, but they all turned out really well. 

It’s so much easier to mark out all of the required lengths and settings on the forward skin prior to locating any of the parts. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that I have one too many holes in my seat belt attachment clip – not a drama. You will also notice that a few of my pieces are primed grey – I decided to prime all of the inside forward fuse in grey primer rather than the green stuff I have used elsewhere. I think it looks a lot nicer and is also a lot easier to apply as it comes out of a spray can.