Seats

Status: Finished!

(31st Mar- 1st Apr 2006) - I decided I had to start on these in preparation for installing central console, flap hardware and fuse wiring. I intend to get everything clecoed in place first, so I can disassemble and rearrange as required. Final assembly will be after everything is installed from the bottom up. The floor of the seats is the elevated false floor of the fuselage. The seat backs are fabricated from ribbed sheet and aluminium angle. The seats are positioned and attached to the floor by three lengths of hinge, allowing some adjustment of position. First job is to hacksaw lengths of the 0.128" angle. These will become side and top braces. They are rounded at the top and angles at the bottom, and this needs to be done carefully to tield 2 each of the left and right angle braces. At their base they need to have slots filed to accommodate the bottom hinge lengths. I NOW know that the way to do this is first to clamp a piece of angle in position, measure the centre of the smaller width flat of the angle, drill an end hole, cleco, drill the other end hole, cleco, layout middle holes and drill. It is much better to measure up with it all clampd carefully in place.

There is an important detail in the plans which could easily be missed. The pianohinges obviously come with two halves, bound together by piano hinge wire. When positioning the piece of 1/2 hinge to the lower seat attachment, the plans show that each OUTBOARD edge must have the open phase of the half-hinge aligned with the edge of the seat - see "details inboard/ouboard" below. A friend who is also building a quick build tells me that he did this and the seat position interfered with the canopy structures! I have decided to leave this hinge unriveted until the canopy fram is fitted, just to be sure.