Fuselage Fit-up: Floor Boards, Rudder Cable Assembly, Battery Access Door/Box, Baggage Compartment & ELT Mount

This past holiday vacation, I began to near completion of the fuselage pre-covering fit-up tasks. These are items you should complete before covering, since they would be cumbersome to accomplish when all closed off. These items included: drilling, sanding, staining and varnishing the front and rear floor boards, installing rudder cable assembly in aft fuselage, installing the battery access door and battery mount hardware, installing the rear baggage compartment, and installing the ELT mounting tray. In addition, I completed fitting up the torque tube, which serves as the control for ailerons via the aft horn. The torque tube will be removed and painted separately.

With the floorboards, main goals were to drill holes through where it will attach to fuselage tangs and where rudder pedals will attach. It was nice to actually do a little wood-working for a change. I think they will really dress-up and complete the cockpit. I strived for a maple look. I found for the wear plates, which were received scratched up, that a fine emery cloth cleaned them up fairly well. One note, the manual indicated that nut-plates (described below) were to be riveted to tangs where floorboards attach; however, Rans said it would be best to hold-off until after painting the interior. They claimed that since they can be installed easy later, it's best to wait so that the threads would not get buggered up with paint.

The battery access door and box assembly were simply riveted together and then to tangs on the plane. The door screws to the door frame via installed nut-plates (imagine a threaded nut riveted to something). The wire shown is a battery ground cable. You can also see rudder pulley cables and guides shown. Two rudder pulleys were also installed.

The baggage compartment has two metal straps that slide into separate pouches in the fabric on the sides and rear. Holes are drilled through the fabric and straps once wrapped over the fuselage tube and then riveted. Straps are also riveted to four points on the bottom of the fuselage and buckles are placed on the straps, which enables vertical tightening of the compartment.

The emergency locating trasmitter (ELT) is shown strapped to a mounting tray that is bolted to welded tangs. This unit senses sudden horizontal deceleration and will broadcast a signal on an emergency frequency. The unit utilizes simple D-cell batteries which is much more economical. The unit is also portable and can be taken away from a crash site for locating purposes.

Now that all installations are complete aft of the baggage compartment and things are fitup in the cockpit, the fuselage is ready for covering and the cockpit is ready for painting. Next, however, I will begin construction of wing structures.