2015 Camrose Fly-in Breakfast

I attended my first fly-in breakfast in Camrose Alberta. What a fun event. It was a treat to see a number of different planes. I focused on the Van's Aircraft. I was really interested in taking a look at some of the examples and I was not disappointed. I was able to view three of the many RV-7A's up close. One of the RV's in my opinion was a bit of a poor build quality on the tail. 

On the other hand, there were two very beautiful examples of really nice quality work. I met the Pilot (Jay) of C-FXPT who in my opinion has a very beautiful example. It was a pleasure to be able to talk to Jay and get some of his advice. I thank him very much for his time. Did I mention that he has a very nice paintjob!!

After leaving the Fly-in, I felt reassured that I was making the right choices to accept/reject some of my build quality. It helped lift my spirits to soldier on!

I did make mental note that all three planes bent the tabs on the elevator/trim skins rather than fashion riblets....hmmmm

Hitting the elevator wall - 1 hour

I cleco'd the E-703/704 assembly to the E-702 spar and quickly found out that I could not get the squeezer in to set the AD4-4 rivets. There was just no way, and it didn't matter what yoke I used. So, the only way to set the rivets was to then use a bucking bar and a double offset rivet set. I set out to set the rivet and quickly bent the rivet. I drilled it out and tried again. nope...strike two. I decided to leave it and try to set the bottom one. Strike three. I made a bit of a mess of the holes. I was now fairly annoyed with what I had done. I went inside the house to reassess what I was doing. After an hour break, I came back and tried again on the other elevator. Going very slow I began to set the rivet. It set fairly nice, and then my rivet set slipped off the head and put a nice smiley face on the manufactured head. Crap. So I decided to try to set the bottom one. Again going slow I began to set it when the gun slipped off the head and really did a number. Double crap. I decided I was done for the day and put everything down.

I came back later and assessed the damage. I'm certain that I could have drilled out the bad rivets and cleaned things up. I could have gone to an AD5 rivet and possibly saved the day. But I was just too worried that I might bend the rivet again and be in the same boat, just more defeated. I considered the fact that it has been a very long time since I had bucked rivets, and using a double offset rivet set by myself, was certainly not making things easier.

I then reasoned that if I started again with new 702/703/704 parts and adjusted the order of riveting, I could set all the needed rivets with the squeezer instead of bucking some of them. The best strategy at this point is to start again, but this time rivet E-702 and E-704 together first. Then I would rivet E-703 to E702/704. Another lesson learned!!!! I really need to think about the order of putting things together so to make sure I do it the best way from the beginning!