Title: Longeron update + Crotch strap brackets
I've decided to redo the longerons and try to get a tighter radius on the sharp fwd bend. To that end, I tweaked my tooling/process with some scrap that I had on hand and got a really nice result. More on that later. The bummer is that there are literally tons of structural aluminum angle down at the Yard Store surplus from Boeing or Cessna or somebody. But because it's surplus and came to them unmarked, they couldn't guarantee what alloy or heat treat it is. $3 a pound 10 minutes from my house, or $25 a stick from vans, plus oversized freight from Oregon :( No way I'm putting some mystery alloy in my airplane, but I really thought about just living with the ones I have. I know the edge distance will work out fine, but it seems to me that a lot of people who have trouble with the windshield frame not fitting right could be creating at least a part of that problem by having more variation than they should on the longerons, so I got out the credit card and ordered new 6061-T6 angle from Vans. I'm going to be really bummed if I go to all of this effort and a year from now the windshield frame still doesn't fit. Should be here in a couple of weeks max because they are so backed up from covid and fire evacuations now. Nancy said since it would be a simple pick and pack, they might move it up in the shipping pecking order, so I might get it sooner. I'm leaving tomorrow for the garmin-centric avionics system design class in KC and then have family stuff in Missouri for several days after, so I'm out for at least a weeks anyway. Back to working on the center section. Crow seat belts showed up over the weekend, and I was able to confirm that the crotch strap hardware is 1/8" thick, but also that it's a different shape than the Vans option, so the pilot holes in the brackets don't line up with the anchor tabs. I've seen lots of other people have this problem with either Hooker for Crow harnesses. Some people match drill the hole in the anchor points lower down to match the Crow hardware, some change out to a different anchor for the web. I thought about it for a while and didn't see why I couldn't just drill a hole in the correct location in the crow hardware. Theres plenty of tab there to give the same edge distance as what it came with, but allow it to fit the Vans bracket better. Plus this way, I'm not drilling extra holes in my airplane that lock me into never being able to change to a different brand of belt.


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