The day begins with the drilling of two openings for the gear legs on the lower forward skin. There is a template in the plans which has to be drawn on the skin.



Then I installed the gear leg support on, here is a picture from inside. This will provide for some intersting work when installing the bolts during final assembly.



After a few tries, the openings are done to size, here is the result.



To strenghten the forward fuselage, some auxiliary longerons and bulkheads are to be installed. The first longeron gets installed diagonally, it has to be cut to correct length and the bakdrilled through the skin.



The next longerons get installed with the help of small clips. The clips are cut from aluminium angle, and all the sides have to be worked on, either cut or drilled.

First I fabricated the four small strips that will hold together the main bulkhead and the fuselage upper longeron, on the picture the two from the right side.



Then I rechecked the alignment of the firewall, the alignment of the weldments on the longeron and the distance from the main bulkhead. I had a small problem centering laterally the firewall, as I had drilled two holes a bit in a hurry. I moved the firewall (my plane will have two more rivets in this area), and drilled all the side skins.



Then I drilled the lower weldment, here is a picture from inside.

I did all the drillings in the forward fuselage : the rear to center fuse junction, the skin to bulheads holes and the outer rib holes (visible on the picture with all the copper clecos).



Then I drilled the armrest (a picture from inside).



I could not resist trying to position the firewall. The drilling of that part will be next.

Only one hour work to tune-up the bending of the forward skin, recleco the ribs and floor and notice that the forward bend of the longeron needs to be tweaked a bit.
On this bad picture one can make out the longeron showing below the skin.

The forward side skin had to be drilled for the step tube, this is done without problem with a fly-cutter.
Then a small part of the skin has to be bend to conform the rear fuselage. The method is well explained in the manual and works (I forgot to take a picture of the setup), and here is the result.
The gap between the skins is normal, one rib is missing inside the fuselage. The picture shos also that the forward part of the bend needs a bit more tweaking to be flush with the skin.



We could not resist trying one of the steps.