Scuffed Parts and Skins

Started the day with a nice flight in Jared’s RV-14. We met up at KPUJ and flew down to KFFC where we met up with Wes and Skip who flew down from Cartersville in Wes’s RV-7. Lunch and a visit to Aircraft Spruce rounded out the afternoon. Then took the long way back to KPUJ. Awesome flight!

Got home and finished scuffing all the parts with some help from Sophie.

I Peeled the elevator and trim tab skins. Then I Deburred the edges and put a slight break in the trailing edge per the plans.

Finally, I scuffed the insides of the skins.

All ready to shoot primer and start dimpling tomorrow.

Today’s Time (hours):	3.0
Empennage Time (hours):	91.0
Total Time (hours):	91.0

Disassembly and Deburring

Clecoed and final drilled the elevator horns to the inboard ribs and spars.

Cut the trim tab pushrod parts and the trim tab horn parts.

Deburred everything and got about half the parts scuffed and ready for primer. Next I’ll scuff the rest of the parts, peel and scuff the skins and prime everything.

My pint of fuel tank sealant arrived from Sky Geek today. I’ll use this to glue the foam ribs in place.

Today’s Time (hours):	3.0
Empennage Time (hours):	88.0
Total Time (hours):	88.0

More Work on Elevators

Jared Solomon and Wes Greer stopped by today and helped move the elevators along. I really appreciate having experienced builders helping me out. Things went really fast and their advice is incredibly valuable. Had lot’s of fun building together, too. Thanks guys!

Today we final drilled the tip ribs to one another and to the counterweight skins. We cut the foam trailing edge and trim tab ribs. We trimmed and deburred the trim tab skins. We trimmed the right elevator aft spar. We bent the closeout tabs on the left elevator skin. We fit and drilled the trim tab hinge. We clecoed everything together and fit/trimmed the elevator trailing edges.

Jared and Wes went home and I continued building. Not even ten minutes unsupervised and I screwed up! I misunderstood the interface between the trailing edge extrusion and the elevator wing tip. I removed way too much material from the trailing edge. I didn’t realize that the wing tip would be trimmed and butt up against the trailing edge. Had I read forward to the “Empennage Fairings” section, I would have understood how this went together. Oh well… Ordered a new trailing edge from Van’s.

Today’s Time (hours):	5.0
Empennage Time (hours):	85.0
Total Time (hours):	85.0

Elevator Parts Prep

Cut and deburred the edges of the elevator ribs and clecoed them together. Also cut and deburred the shear clips.

Straightened and fluted the tip ribs. Deburred the edges of the ribs and the counterweight skins. Clecoed everything together. Ready for drilling.

Copied the plans page with the templates for the foam trailing edge ribs and the trim tab ribs. Checked to ensure that the copy was 1:1 withe respect to the original.

Today’s Time (hours):	3.0
Empennage Time (hours):	80.0
Total Time (hours):	80.0

Picked and Inspected Parts for Elevators

Read through the plans for the elevators and picked all the parts. I also cleaned up the workshop.

I ordered some fuel tank sealant from SkyGeek. Neither Van’s nor Spruce had pint cans. I only need enough to cement the elevator and trim tab ribs in place. And the stuff has a relatively short shelf life.

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Today’s Time (hours):	1.0
Empennage Time (hours):	77.0
Total Time (hours):	77.0

Horizontal Stabilizer Complete

Riveted the skin to the forward spar and all the ribs. Did all of these rivets with the gun and small tungsten bucking bar. It was a long day. Only had to drill out a couple of duds, though.

Then clecoed the rear spar to the ribs and skins and riveted in place. The inboard and outboard ribs are riveted with AN470-4 rivets while all the others are blind-riveted with LP4’s. I used the squeezer to rivet the skins to the rear spar flanges.

Et Viola…

Merry Christmas!

Today’s Time (hours):	7.0
Empennage Time (hours):	76.0
Total Time (hours):	76.0

Ordered Wing Kit

order

Things are progressing a bit faster than I had expected on the tail build. This is awesome. It means I’ll be flying sooner! But I just realized I should check with Van’s to see what the lead time is on the wing kit. I’d hate to have all this progress go to waste sitting around waiting on the next kit. Good thing I did. They’re up to a 10 week lead time for the wing kit!

Primed and Assembled Horizontal Stabilizer

Scuffed and primed the skins, ribs, stringers and center web.

Riveted together the inboard ribs, web, and stringers.

Clecoed and riveted the ribs to the front spar

Clecoed and riveted four nose ribs to the skins. Special thanks to Jared Solomon for lending me his HS cradles. Also for the awesome flight flight yesterday in his RV-14. Makes me want to build faster.

Clecoed the forward spar and associated substructure to the skins. Ready for final riveting. Should have the HS buttoned up tomorrow!

A very satisfying day of progress!

Today’s Time (hours):	5.0
Empennage Time (hours):	69.0
Total Time (hours):	69.0

Countersunk spar flanges and Stringers and dimpled skins

Machine countersunk the flanges of both spars.

Used the blunted soldering iron to remove the blue plastic from the rivet lines. Then used a file and sand paper to clean up the edges. They were pretty rough.

Used the trusty DRDT-2 to dimple the skins. Good upper body workout. Lots of holes!

Tada…

Ribs, stringers, and skins all ready for scuff and prime.

Today’s Time (hours):	3.0
Empennage Time (hours):	64.0
Total Time (hours):	64.0

Prepared HS Ribs

Deburred all the HS ribs with 400 grit sand paper. Sand paper seemed like the most straightforward approach because of all the segments in the flanges. I was able to get in between the segments with it.

I fluted the ribs and modified the two nose ribs and two inspar ribs per the plans and marked them.

I drilled the inboard nose and inspar ribs to the forward spar. Then I deburred all the holes in all the ribs and then dimpled all the ones that mate up to the skins. So. Many. Holes. I can’t even imagine what the wings are going to be like.

I also created a template to make cradles to hold the HS when assembling. I’ll scrounge some plywood to cut them from and some sort of square stock for the bases.

Today’s Time (hours):	3.0
Empennage Time (hours):	61.0
Total Time (hours):	61.0