As usual, drilling the holes for the ports was a traumatic experience...whenever I have to drill the outside, I feel like taking a stiff drink beforehand. And two afterwards. The ports are large pop rivets. You have to hammer out the mandrel. That was almost worse than drilling...hammering on my fuselage, worrying about denting it...yikes! The mandrels do not come out easily, either.

Once the pop rivets ("static ports") were in, I attached the tubing and sealed the whole area with RTV. The tubing just slips over the remaining end of the rivet. It gets squished when you pull it, so there's not much left...less than 1/4". Still, the RTV helps keep it on.

This is my first deviation from the instructions. Van's just wants you to drill holes in the bulkhead and zip-tie the tubing to the flange. I didn't want to drill all those holes, and I didn't want the tubing to be in contact with the flange. So I stuck on a bunch of self-adhesive cable anchors.

The zip ties are all in, ready to receive the tubing. This is pretty far in the tailcone, and I still had the elevator pushrod at this point, so I was very uncomfortable. I was working with one hand most of the time and getting out every two minutes to get another tool or part. Plus, I had used alcohol to clean the metal where the cable anchors were going to go and the fumes were starting to get to make my eyes water. Half-blind and only one hand...hmmm, this would be a good time to go to sleep.

Next day, I threaded the tubing through the zip ties. I protected the tubing from the zip ties with a little piece of heat shrink tubing. Yes, I'm a type AR personality.

It's tricky to tighten the zip ties just enough...I don't want to block the tubing, after all.

I also slipped a piece of heat shrink tubing over the end of the pop rivet. I don't want it to work loose with vibration (or, more to the point, with my fiddling during installation.)

Here's the plastic tee. The unconnected branch will go to the instrument panel. I fiddled with the two short lengths that connect to the pop rivets so that they're not downward-going...I hope to keep them free of water that way. I guess I'll be inspecting them after the airplane gets wet for the first time.

This is how I brought the tubing forward. More zip ties and cable anchors. You can't tell from this angle, but the tubing does not touch the longeron. In fact, it touches no metal anywhere. An Adel clamp holds the tee to the bulkhead...the only hole I drilled for this. The plans don't say how to get it forward of the baggage compartment (i.e. out of the tailcone.) They suggest just running under that longeron all the way to the cockpit, which implies it runs unprotected through the baggage compartment. I wanted it to be out of sight and not prone to damage by baggage. I also wanted to avoid making large holes in the structure that stands between the tailcone and the instrument panel.

The fuselage came with a hole to run the tubing forward, so I tried it...but like I said, I didn't like having it in the baggage compartment. It was really hard to contort myself for the routing job that was required for my chosen path to the cockpt...the tunnel between the seats. There's a cable run there anyway, with snap bushings, holes, etc. so I figured I'd try to run the static line there, too. For that job, I had to call in a helper...

Luci quickly got the hang of cleaning with alcohol, sticking on the cable anchor, and then threading the zip ties. Plus, of course, she fit around the elevator pushrod much better than me!

To Luci's left, you can see the tubing come down the vertical part of the bulkhead. Then it turns inboard and finds its way to the tunnel near the centerline.

She routed the tubing just the way I told her...good to keep in mind for maintenance down the road!