Here’s what’s been happening over the past couple of months. First, I built up all the necessary hard points for the rear seat (thank Mike
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIcdU1eGjng ). I followed Mike’s design for a removable rear seat with a few little changes. I have a removable tube at the front of the seat where Mike’s PA 12 has the swing down legs only at that location. I will also have legs on the cross tube but decided to have the side supports welded in since the fuselage allowed for that placement. I also added the seat belt tabs for the rear seat. The belts will be easily removable from the center so the floor will be flat and open for cargo. I also added the center mounted flap handle. For simplicity, the cable will be above the tubes in the floor of the fuselage. I may set the plywood floor above the cable or just have a guard, not sure yet. I’m leaning toward having the cable just below the floor for an unobstructed cargo area. I’ll work that out when I install the plywood after painting the fuselage tubes. Next, I started to weld in the many tabs necessary for the floor and sidewalls. I also added another support for the seat tracks. I found the unsupported span of the outside tracks was too great and I had some bending in the track. The extra pad should prevent that from happening. After welding in all the tabs I built a rotisserie so I could finish up the welding of the tubes recently added. I’ll also be able to use the rotisserie for painting and covering. Now some pictures.
First, the rear seat. This shot shows some plywood and old foam to get a look fit and location of the seat. I also welded tabs on the side tube for the lap belt.
The next shot shows the ply and foam removed. You can see the three cross tubes that will support the seat. The bottom of the seat will have additional supports when the floor is in place.
This next shot shows the three tubes removed leaving an open cargo area.
Next, the center lap belt attachment was added. I welded a tube between the existing tubes in the floor ant attached a pad for both center bent attachments. The belts will come up and out through the seat bottom.
I added the flap handle just after the seat cross tubes and lap belt tabs were done. The picture above shows the rear lower pulley for the flaps. I decided to bring the flaps down the middle of the fuselage to avoid additional pulleys to locate the cables along one side or the other. I realize this restricts the lower baggage area but seeing how much space is in the rear set area for cargo, I decided it would fit my needs.
This picture shows how the flap cables will come from the two wings to a central cable connector, than down the center of the fuselage.
I added two pulleys to guide the cable forward toward the flap handle. I could not put the cable below the floor tubes due to the push-pull tube from the sticks to the rear bell crank. If I raise the floor 1" the cable will be between the floor and the tubes.
I used a flap handle from a PA-28, making a new support and adding a cross tube.
With the flap handle in place, I added a couple more pads for the seat tracks to the flap handle cross tube. I also added a couple short tubes and two more seat track support tabs forward of the flap tube. This will give me 4 support points for each seat track.
This next picture shows the run of the flap cable so far. Lots more to do on the flaps but this gets me closer to where I can paint the fuselage.
Next step was adding all the tabs and building a rotisserie for the fuselage. After a trip to a junk yard and modifying a Harbor Freight engine stand I had a nicely working rotisserie.
Lots more to do before I can paint the fuselage but I am getting close. I still need to weld the mount in the tail for the electric trim. I have all the parts from Javron so that will go pretty quickly. More to come soon.
Marty57