Nose trusses and a heel tube

I was able to spare a couple hours tonight to work on the nose a bit more. In particular, I added two cross trusses (truss 3 if you count from the front) that definitely stiffened things up a lot. You can sit on the assembly now and it doesn't flex near as much. You can definitely see I have not done any end finishing on them and the tips are still sharp. I didn't get a lot of working time in tonight...

Oh and the mega obvious, I beat into "oval" (near rectangle) the footrest tube. This bugger is for placing your heels when you operate the rudder pedals that hinge on the tube just forward of the rectangle tube. Yes, I beat this tube forever with a hammer to get it this shape. I stuck a wooden piece of tail rib into the center and that's what allowed me to get a near flat top and bottom. I'm not entirely sure if this was Sandlin's idea, but this is non-structural anyhow, so I'm not going to sweat it.

One thing I will sweat later is the lower tube's poor bend. I haven't worked with aluminum before this project, so the kinkds in the tube were the only way I was able to get the big 1" tube to bend. Lesson learned, a large trashcan or something sturdy and round would have been much better to use. I will be ordering a replacement tube when I get more long tubes and I'll just rebend this and match-drill to fit my other truss members. Like I said, no sweat!

Next I have the other end of that truss attachment, where it fits into the mass of several other trusses coming in too. Like I said last post, the washers are for spacing out for another crimped tube to fit in here, but now I added that forward truss without the spacing washers. This is the truss that really made things more rigid. The end angles are mighty complex, but the aluminum is soft enough to play happy with the weird bending.






I have one more view of this same junction area in this picture. The overlap is clearly visible and you can see where I have actually dressed the ends of these crimped tubes a bit. Not too much rounding yet until I figure out what is appropriate.

My crimping is getting better though. The hammer does seem to make a bit of a difference.





Last picture of the day is the aft section where I started the tubes that will support the wheel axle. I have to make more of the bugger u-brackets to put on the ends of these before I can start assembling, so it's going to take another couple evenings of work. That's the fun of it though, yeah?