Today was quite the marathon day. The family went out to run a bunch of errands so I got to put in a full day out in the garage. It was excellent. I would have probably got a lot more done if I did not end up spending 45 minutes taking apart the trailing edge spar of the horizontal stabilizer and redoing the countersunk holes to increase the depth. I just did not feel like these holes were receiving the skin dimples well enough and I wasn’t happy with how it looked. So I took it all apart and worked the problem and I am glad I did. It looks much better now. On to the pictures and thoughts for the day.
Finally an action shot of riveting the skins. Using my ANR headphones was an excellent way to protect my ears while riveting so I’m happy to have those on. I look like a total doofus but it isn’t because of the headphone I’m sure.
Action shot! Jamming my hand between the skins with the bucking bar was quite a trick but I developed quite the skill at it. You can also see the reemergence of Anne to help to take these pictures (well you can’t see her, but her skill of putting her finger over the lens is there).
Rivet like gangster.
Wow. At times it felt like it was never going to happen but here it is! As I mentioned above, I had the rear spar clecoed in place and did not like the way the skins sat on the spar. I removed the whole thing and added a bit of depth to the countersunk holes on the flanges of the spars. I put it all back together and used the squeezer to close up the entire length of the rear spar. It felt pretty good to have done.
On to the elevators! The first several steps, much like the rudder, involved cutting out pieces and deburring all of the edges. While not a huge deal, it is definitely time consuming. I got it all done, clecoed together, and match drilled. Not too bad really.
Once again I find myself being tempted by the idea of using a soldering iron to remove just pieces of blue covering rather than the whole thing. It took a bit of investment in time and I still have three to go, so we will see if I have enough patience to complete the other three or if I just rip it off and go to town. Coin toss at this point honestly…
Total time today = 6 hours
Total time empennage = 75 hours
Total time aircraft = 75 hours