Tailcone Start

This is the last assembly of the tail kit.  Construction usually takes around 100 hours going by what I see others have done online.  I'm heavily loaded on our house remodel too, so I expect this one to take a while.

The next kit is the wings, and they take 6-8 weeks from order to arrival so I'll be placing that order hopefully this summer yet.

At first, most of what you do is prepare the bulkheads, stiffeners, and longerons.  Its quite a bit of bandsaw work, drilling, sanding and deburring.  You have to mark a line down the length of all the J-channel stiffeners.  There's a lot of them so I made a little template to hold the marker as I slide it down.



The longeron bending was a little scary at first, but I picked it up quick.  You put some stiff pieces of angle aluminum in a vice and whack it with a hammer to get a slight bend, about 2 degrees.  I went nice and slow and got a bend that was just right on both.



Then you put the bottom tailcone skin upside down on some saw horses and start putting the bulkheads on the skin.  I don't have tall sawhorses so I improvised with some 2x6s fastened to the benches.


A small GOTCHA here.  I put the bottom skin on my "saw horses" in the wrong direction here.  This has the left side open to the outside, the plans ask for access to the right side first.  It won't matter if you are on real sawhorses or just keep it in mind when labeling parts L/R.