Undercarriage Channel
Fresh back from a week of vacation on Cape Cod, I resumed work on the center fuselage. On Sunday I worked on page E3, which assembles the rear bottom assembly, undercarriage channel, and main spar assembly onto the bottom skins. Quite a few big and substantial assemblies here, but that’s because most of the weight of the aircraft is supported in this area.
I spent a lot of time with the flanges on ribs CF-RIB-001-L / R, which were not formed properly and made it impossible to slide the undercarriage channel into place. I had to bang on them with a hammer and shape with a seamer for quite some time; overall I needed to make the opening between the flanges 1.7 mm wider. After some elbow grease and a bunch of swearing, I got the channel in place.
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Could you have removed the flanges to provide clearance them substitutute them with extruded aluminium angele??
That’s an interesting idea, I didn’t consider it. That would probably work, and you’d probably only need to remove the flange from one side – rear side preferably, since it’s pretty busy on the front side of the channel. Of course, you’ll need to source your own angle stock, and match drill it.