What better to do on a hot muggy, rainy, November day?  Why work on an airplane of course.  Louie was not impressed with the rain and kept a safe distance from the wet stuff.

All I really managed to accomplish today was build up some frustration while I worked on the fuel floats.  However, there were two valuable lessons learned:

1)  As the pictures shows, there are two different fuel float part numbers (L & R).  I apparently glossed over the plans and failed to notice two different part numbers on the box.  I finally realized something was wrong when I just couldn't get the holes on the sending unit and the inboard baffle to line up.  

2)  If after bending the float wire the float just isn't quite right and touches either top or bottom of the skin, cutting it shorter does not work.  These wires are pretty stiff, and once they are bent at a 90 degree angle it is difficult to unbend or straighten them.  So Van's got another $5 from me and sent me a new wire.   In the meantime I used the wire for the other sending unit (which I managed to not screw up).

As with most builders, I didn't get too many pictures of proseal in action.  Before I got to the fun stuff there were are  couple of tooling holes in the end ribs that needed to be filled with #6  rivets.  The plans suggested mounting the rivet gun in the C-Frame to buck these.  I used that method for the first few, but I overlooked the other end ribs and installed them without first filling the holes.  I bucked these using my 5lb back rivet bar with no problems.

After seemingly endless prep work on the skins and stiffeners I finally had my first proseal session.  It was messy and nasty, but I knew that going in.  Many people apply the proseal and 100% cleco and wait for the proseal to cure before riveting.  Again, I decided to stick with Van's and rivet them wet.  It was not not fun, but mission accomplished.

Below are a few pictures Tiffany snapped while I was fitting the tanks.

I wasn't quite sure how I was going to be able to countersink the fuel filler flange but a scrap piece of wood and a clamp was all it took to hold things steady as I worked my way around the flange with the CS cage.

I used the same technique I used for dimpling the rudder.  Attach a piece of safety wire to a bungee that is attached to the garage door track.  This allowed me to easily dimple the skin by holding the folded over skin open and out of the way.