I started out today by trimming all the overhanging glass with the Fein saw.

I then drilled pilot holes and clecoed the tail cones to the front pod sections.  After that, I then drilled out the wider diameter holes for CAMLOC/Skybolt 1/4-turn fasteners.

Here’s a shot of both the trimmed glass on the pylon TEs of both pods, and the top 2 CAMLOCs mounted in place.

A wide view of the assembled and glassed (lower assembly) baggage pods.

A shot showing the “business area” of the glassed pylon TEs and the attached tail cones via CAMLOCs.

An example of CAMLOC attach holes on the tail cones.

And the Skybolt lightweight stainless steel receptacles.  I have to say, these are quickly becoming my favorite 1/4-turn fastener receptacle.  Light yet strong!

One slight issue that I had is that since I added extra plies of glass to the lower flange on one of the baggage pods, I will have to order a longer CAMLOC stud to use in lieu of the -7 stud I currently have on-hand for both bottom CL attach points.  No big issue of course and I’ll simply add it to my next ACS order.

The first shot below focuses on the exterior side of the Skybolt receptacle (right side, in the hole) and the next shot focuses more on the interior receptacles.  As a point of note, to set the interior side of the rivets on the upper receptacles I had to use a small piece of 2024 aluminum as an impromptu bucking bar.

I do still have the cradles to build for these things, but for now I’m happy that the main portion of the baggage pods are assembled with reinforcement glass in place.

Today I pulled the peel ply from pod #1’s pylon TE layup, but I really didn’t get a chance to clean it up or trim the glass. As you can see in the pic below, I didn’t get around either to trimming the glass on the lower perimeter layup on the tail cone mounting flange on pod #2.

I did however get the pylon TE layup glassed on pod #2.  After laying up the 3 plies on each side I then peel plied the layup.  I will say that what makes this layup a little tricky is the flox wedge that lies between the 2 sides of glass coming together as the transition for the rather thick pylon TE.  Of course the goal is to get an even amount of flox all the way along the edge to get a nice uniform glass-to-glass shear bond.

With the bit of epoxy I had left over from the pylon TE layup on pod #2, I glassed in 5 plies of BID on the top flange of pod #1 to fill in the CL depression and even out the tail cone mounting flange profile.

That’s it for today’s build escapades.  I will say that for the pods themselves the heavy lifting is over for the more entailed layups.  Tomorrow my goal will be to get the tail cones mounted to the pods with 1/4-turn fasteners (CAMLOCs).

I started out again by pulling the peel ply and cleaning up the major seam layup on baggage #2 earlier in the day.

Then later on I did the small glass layup on the aft bottom interface ring for the aft cone to attach to on baggage pod #2.  Optimally this would be an extension of the major seam layup, but with the joggle right there I didn’t want to mess around with a good chance of distorting either portions of the layup, so I just separated these layups into 2 distinct parts.

Although my way is not as optimal in strength as carrying the glass all the way through, I have no doubts it will be plenty strong for my baggage pod ops.  In fact, since the matching layup on pod #1 wasn’t quite thick enough, I laid up 5 small plies of BID here on pod #2.

I then laid up 3 plies of BID –as per Gary Hunter’s instructions– on each side of the pylon’s trailing edge of baggage pod #1.  Right at the trailing edge, filling in a small gap between the 2 layups, is a bead of flox.  I then peel plied the layup and left it to cure.

Tomorrow I plan to do the pylon trailing edge layup on pod #2.  In addition, after all the major baggage pod glassing is completed I’ll then attach the aft cones to the main pod structures with CAMLOCs/Skybolt 1/4-turn fasteners.

Since the baggage pods attach to the wings, I think I’ll annotate their build in Chapter 19.

Since I’m back in full on house update mode, I am only allowing myself about 2 hours a day to work on any airplane build related stuff.  Starting in on my first 2 hour mini-build session I decided to get some of the prep work knocked out on the baggage pods.

The first task was to sand the depression all away around the seam down the front of the pylon and the body of each baggage pod.  Below you can see the baggage pod on the left has been sanded while the one on the right has not.

And here’s the bottom side seam sanded as well.  The depression that Gary Hunter created about the seam is deep enough to handle 3 plies of BID.

Here we have both baggage pods’ forward sections sanded about the seams.

I then laid up 3 plies of 2″ wide BID tapes around the seams & inside the depression on one of the baggage pods.

Tomorrow I’ll lay up the 3-ply BID reinforcement layup on the other baggage pod. There’s also a layup that needs to completed on the TE of the pylon, which I will get to over the next couple of days.

This morning I finally got around to getting over to the storage unit to put the bird in its new cage for awhile: a 10’x20′ storage unit.

One last trailer shot before I unloaded the fuselage.  I have to say I’m loving the canopy. The fit and geometry is still spot on and it’s simply a treat to open & close the canopy…. and moreover to have a canopy mounted to open & close!!

Since the front rollup doorframe of the storage unit is a few inches narrower than the CS spar width I had to do some angling machinations to get the fuselage into the unit, but it still went in without too much effort.

Having not seen my nose or canopy with the bird in the grazing position, I wanted to get a wide angle grazing shot.

And a closer grazing shot….

And finally a grazing shot with the canopy open.

I have to say it’s a relief to have the fuselage safely down in NC without any incident. Sadly, from here on out over the next month or so my build postings will be fewer and farther apart until I’m relocated down here in NC.