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Attaching F-714 aft deck to longerons

fabricflyer

Well Known Member
What are most of you using to level the fuselage, a bubble or a digital level? My digital level keeps bouncing from 0.0 to 0.1 while the bubble looks OK. What is close enough before I attach the F-714 aft deck to the longerons?
 
For longitudinal levelling, I used a DIY store laser level mounted on a camera tripod and shone it on the longeron rivet line. Hard to beat a 10 to 12 foot level line.

FYI, I had high confidence in that laser. When doing my gear fairings, I pretty much used vans instructions but I included the laser as a tool. At one point I shined the laser onto the plumb bob line. It was kinda cool to see the line flare into a brilliantly illuminated vertical line.

For levelling in the roll axis, I used a good quality bubble level and used the proper techniques (flipping it 180 deg and averaging bubble position) to account for manufacturing error in the level itself.
 
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I used a Smart Level and got it down to 0.1 degrees. RV guys at the airport were laughing at me for fretting over that tenth of a degree. They built RV-6's so they have no sympathy for me and my RV-9A build.
 
If you have 0.1 degree of twist in the fuselage, one HS tip will be about 0.085" too high and the other will be that much too low, assuming a perfect HS, of course;).
 
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