I bought a Uniden Bearcat BC780XLT scanner off of eBay for $20. This is one of the better scanners you can buy. Since its a cheap used item that didn’t include an antenna or a regular power supply I wanted to make sure it worked. I used a 120V to 12V cigarette adapter to power the unit and a ghetto install of a coax antenna to check functionality. I was able to pickup the automated weather observation at KDMW and a local firehouse, so I know it works. In the future I will wire up a proper antenna and power for the hangar, so I can listen to guys in the pattern, or pull up the weather… or just mess around with it in conjunction with my ADS-B on the Raspberry Pi.  

Back to the build. Today was all about deburring. Edge deburring. Hole deburring. Scotchbrite wheel, files. The whole nine yards. Not much else to report.

Squire was guarding Jim’s plane and keeping a watchful eye for intruders. 

The Show Planes Fastback includes new cockpit rails that are slightly smaller and attach in a different manner from the standard rails. With a quick build this means that I need to remove the currently installed rails. First I removed the bolts holding the center bar in place.  

Then I began drilling out each of the rivets carefully using my rivet removal tool. I used a #40 (or #30) punch to break the head off each rivet and then a spring loaded center punch to pop the remainder of the rivet out of the longeron. Its preferable to not drill through the longeron… this is a structure you don’t want mistakes in.

Sometimes pop rivets can be a pain in the rear to remove. I find that if you drill completely through with a slightly smaller drill and then pop the heads of in the same manner, its easy to punch the remainder through. I use a number 38 drill.   

Here is the fuselage with both rails removed.

Next you need to trim the two F-804c bulkheads down to accommodate the thinner rails. The cut line is marked in red. This is going to result in a few areas close to existing holes. There is a center cap that goes over this area, so I’ll have to modify that, and test alignment to see how to best deal with any edge distance problems after the trim. In the Show Planes manual, the bulkheads do not show any holes, so I’m assuming this was added to the updated -1 fuselage.   

Here you can see the photo without any holes in the Show Planes instructions. Also, there appears to be an additional part on top, that is not present in my kit.   

Here is the cap that will need to be modified to fit the newly trimmed area.

After the cut.  

Unlike the stock rails, the new rails fit between the longeron and the outer skin at the front. A few cleco clamps and attention to detail are required before you start this drilling.  The photo is supposed to say longeron not lingering. Autocorrect!

Not too much accomplished today. I removed the upper aft fastback portion of the fuselage in preparation for deburring, dimpling, and priming.  

There is a slight ripple visible in the aft skin. You can see it in the shadow line near the middle of the photo below. Its very obvious when the skin is laid flat, but when you curl the skin it is almost nonexistent. I’m not worried about it, but I’m curious as to how it got there. Somewhere in the installation process, as I don’t believe it was this way when it arrived.