Back drilled the F-719B clips. Fabricated the F-717 lower longerons from angle stock. Cut them oversized by about an 1/8th, but needn't have bothered. Lots of back and forth between the fuse and 3M wheel taking off a little bit at a time until they fit nicely laterally.

Their was an interference on the fwd end between the F-717 and the F-713 where they come together at the lower firewall weldment. I've seen this on other build logs as well. Just took about 1/16" off the upper fwd corner of the F-717 so that corner is parallel to the F-713 rather than interfering with it. Drilled to weldment per print.

The F-684 gave me fits. I was having real problem figuring out how this was oriented from the print, so I went to several build logs and found pictures that made it much more clear. Once I was sure what the finished product was supposed to look like, I trimmed per print.

There is a notch on the fwd edge that allows the lower horizontal edge to rest inside the weldment while the fwd edge nests outside the firewall vertical angle. In order for this to happen, you have to create a notch at the transition and bend the two tabs in opposite directions. If you locate this notch per print, it doesn't allow the gusset to rest low enough for the lower horizontal edge to be flush with the F-717 lower longeron on the other side of the weldment. In order to get it located properly, I had to enlarge the slot quite a bit.

I see on other build logs that this is pretty common, but I don't like the look of that huge notch and think that it will lead to a bare minimum e.d. when I match drill. Long story short, This part only cost $4.50, so I called Nancy at Vans and had her shoot me a replacement in a fedex envelope. I'm going to cut this notch to fit better on the replacement.

While I was at it, I ordered the angles that are called out in Service Letter SL-00014 for stiffening the tailcone. I want to get that taken care of before I get much further and forgot to order it with the fuselage kit.

WARNING- this is a note from Future self- check out the entry from 12-02-2020 to see how you get to redo the F-684 yet again :(