F-22 installation (3.0 hrs)
F-22 attaches to the fuselage in two separate stages.
I will cover the initial one here, where F-22 is floxed to the front of the fuselage, and two 4-ply BID tapes, 2.5” wide, secure it from the inside.
In the next phase, the outer skin of the fuselage will wrap over F-22, and tie to the inside of the sidewalls, but that’s a topic for a later date.
Since I previously took F-22 off to work on the instrument panel, I made the classic binary mistake (0/1, up/down, left/wright) when I tried putting it back upside down.
Luckily, it was not a perfect fit, so I realized pretty quickly what was going on, and flipped it over. Unfortunately, I had already wasted half an hour measuring and marking all the wrong places for the BID tapes, and sanded the fiberglass for the occasion, all of which had to be redone wasting an additional half hour, and making more fiberglass dust that needed to be cleaned up.
Note: Sanding fiberglass to make a part ready for secondary bonding, is a total pain in the rear!
Had I not caught my mistake in time, I might have been “a little” disappointed right about now, but it sure would have made for a funky looking fuselage.
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| Wrong place marked and sanded. Doh! |
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| Floxing F-22 |
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| F-22 back in position, and sidewall correctly sanded :-) |
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| Back in business! |
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| 4-ply BID tape in place |
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| Plastic backing removed |
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| "Finally I get to use the 3" peel-ply roll!" |
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| More big peel-ply on the other side |
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| BID cured and peel-ply removed |
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| It'll be fine with a little cleanup |
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