Tuesday, November 11, 2014

VS Spar Fail! - 0.5 Hours

Well that's it. I have completely hit a wall.  In my attempts to drill out the bad rivets located closest to the brackets I have ruined the entire VS Rear Spar. I'm so defeated right now. If this is how the entire project is going to go I don't think I want to continue. It's just a lesson in frustration and spending money.

I really hate to give up, but spending so many hours and have it go all for nothing is really depressing. I would feel better about it if I felt I was making progress, but it seems that doing it wrong is just so easy, but doing it right is just so hard. The cherry on top is that you can spend so much time on perfecting a number of pieces, but ruin them all in an instant with a bad drill-out.

I am seriously considering throwing in the towel on this as bridging this gap seems to be impossible. I afraid to invest more time and money into this as I am just not anywhere close to where I need to be skill wise.

EAA Meeting #2

I ended up taking my VS rear spar to the meeting to have some of the other members look over my work. All in all its as it was expected. Some rivets look good, a few need to be redone (The ones closest to the bottom brackets). One member has suggested bucking the rivets rather than sqeezing or using the back rivet set. He said that bucking them would allow me to get a whole lot closer. He was very encouraging and mentioned that it takes a while to develop the skills. He said that often folks will end up redoing their entire empennage at the very end of the project because their skills have improved so much by the time they get through the wings. I suppose I just have to chug away at it. if it works...great. If not, Oh well.