Empennage Kit

Wing Kit

Fuselage Kit

Finising Kit

Lessons learned

12-14-06
Progress has been pretty slow since I finished the horizontal stabilizer
just before Thanksgiving.  However, I am slowly getting the elevators
put together.  I've got them to the "porcupine" stage now, where
everything is cleco'd together.  This is always somewhat frustrating
because it seems that the assembly is almost complete when you can see
the parts together, but the work is less than half done.  Now that the
parts have been cleco'd together, all the holes in the skins have to be
match-drilled.  Then everything gets disassembled, and evey hole must be
de-burred (including the holes in the underlying structure) on both
sides.  Then most of the holes (all on the exterior surface) get either
dimpled or machine countersunk to accept the flush rivets.  Then
everything gets alodined and reassembled with cleco's and only then does
the actual riveting commence.  My estimate is that I've got at least 40
hours more work to do to finish the elevators, and then I've still got
to build both trim tabs (which is supposed to be one of the more
difficult assemblies of the whole airplane).  It will most likely be the
end of January at the earliest before I'm ready to start working on the
tailcone.


This shows me match drilling the holes in the rear spar with the
internal ribs

This shows the left elevator cleco'd together, awaiting match drilling of the 
holes in the skin.

The elevators will have the ribs back-riveted to the skins just as the
rudder did.  I like back-riveting.  With the proper set-up (a heavy
polished steel plate inletted into the surface of my workbench) it is an
easy way to make smooth flush rivets in very thin skin (the skin of the
elevators is only 0.016" thick).  The countersunk rivet head is pressed
against the steel plate and the rivet gun is used to directly buck the
shop-formed head on the inside of the skin.  With luck I'll have that
task done before New year's Day.

1-23-07

Finally, I'm beginning to feel that I'm back on track building this
airplane. Put in almost 3 hours last night and got a lot of the
riveting done on the left elevator. I back-riveted all the ribs to the
inside of the top and bottom skins, and then got the top skin riveted to
the rear spar.

Above shows the top skin riveted to the rear spar, with the
top halves of the ribs riveted to the skin.

Above shows the assembly with the front spar trial fitted in
place, so you can see what the basic structure looks like. The grey
patches near the trailing edge on the skin are scuffed areas where foam
plastic false ribs will be glued in place to stiffen the skins at the
trailing edge.

Above shows the bottom skin with its rib halves riveted in
place, along with the doubler for the elevator trim access panel.

Above shows the elevator with the bottom skin cleco'd in place, ready for riveting. Once I get the left elevator up to the point of being ready to rivet the trailing edge, I'll stop working on it and bring the right elevator up to the same stage. For now, the right elevator is all cleco'd together, but I need to match-drill all the holes, disassemble everything, deburr
all the holes, dimple all the holes, clean and alodine all the components, and then begin riveting it to bring it up to the same level of assembly as the left elevator. Then I'll do both trailing edges together, as well as gluing in the foam ribs because both of those steps
use fuel tank sealant as the adhesive to hold everything together. Then the tip ribs (visible in Left Elevator 1, 2, and 4) will be riveted onto the tip, the counterbalance weights installed and the leading edges will be roll-formed and riveted together. I should have both elevators finished by the end of February.

Vertical Stabalizer | Rudder | Horizontal Stabalizer |
Elevators | Tailcone