Saturday, September 26, 2015

Closed the VS and HS - 4.5 Hours



I was really gunnin' to get things closed up. It feels great to pass the inspection, but I know it will feel much better to finally close up these pieces and complete them.
I started in on placing the rear spar in the Vertical Stabilizer and riveting it into place. It's a bit tricky to set some of those rivets as I have shop heads exposed on the backside of the spar stiffener (I was using the recommended method of keeping the shop head on the thinnest material as per the Van's Airforce forums - Seems that it's not always the most ideal to do this, but extremely difficult to determine when it's wise and when it's not. I then set the three pop rivets. All done!
I then went to work on getting the rear spar in the horizontal stabilizer. Everything went really well. Slow and steady wins the race, and I'm extremely pleased with how nice the rivets are set. I just need to drill out one AN470AD4-4 rivet that attaches the end rib, as well as I need to set the rivets to the front spar...Just a couple of odd rivets to set but I'll hold off until i'm feeling super confident on those.
Just about done the horizontal stabilizer.