Ground School and Flying Lessons

Well. I have been hard at work, going through ground school and I am about 70% complete. The finish is just on the horizon. Lots to learn but I feel like I'm doing just fine.

So know that I am wrapping up ground school, its time to get going on my license. I've signed up with a flying school out at Cooking Lake CEZ3 which is just a 25min drive from my house. Tuesday was officially the first Canadian Lesson, and this morning was my second lesson. Tricky lesson as the wind was 17-20kt gusting up to 25kt. The landing was fairly crosswind, so it was just sitting back and watching on the landing.

Ground School

I have not spent any time on the build as of late. I did manage to order another aileron and have some parts deburred, the skin stiffeners cut, shaped and deburred. But I haven't done much other than that.

I have been focused on Ground School. I had enrolled online some time ago, but was really focused on the build. I did spend a little time on it but never really gave it my full attention. I knew that the course time limit was expiring so I decided to put the build on hold (I need to save up money for the fuselage anyway) and give my full attention to Ground School.

Well...So far, I am about 40% through. I've finished 4 sections, 1 - Airframes, Engines and Systems, 2 - Theory of Flight 3- Flight Operations and Aircraft Performance, 4- Pilot Decision Making and Human Factors. The 5th section I am nearly through - Flight Instruments.



I will say that one really has to bury them in studying...So much to memorize. I do intend to get the aileron done in the next while and then call for pre-close inspection. Maybe a build break is a good thing. All in all....I am still working away putting the hours in....

Disaster stikes the Left aileron - 3 hours

Well, I have gone and done it. Totally ruined my left aileron trying to rivet the skin to the main spar. What an awful area to try and rivet. The spar flange has a slight acute angle to it which presents a bit of a challenge to get the bucking bar at an angle to help sit flush with the rivets. I used just about every method I could think of to try and rivet these properly. I used a small oak shim in an attempt to prop up, or adjust the tungsten bucking bar to the appropriate angle. I've tried different bucking bars, different angles, different shims, taking angry, talking pleasant, massaging it, giving it a break, everything!!!! and in the end, every rivet shop head wants to dump to the same side every time. Worse than the right aileron.  Of course once a dimpled rivet hole has been dumped now the nightmare begins. Will it dump again, well chances of it going awry are growing. Too many times, now an opps rivet. ****! the oops rivet has dumped...They all dump in the same direction. After about 3 hours if consistently terrible rivets all dumped the same direction I have successfully ruined a potentially perfect aileron.

Today....building my plane has not brought joy to my life!!

Just a sampling of how things have gone astray....It all starts going downhill from here!

In retrospect I am trying to figure out why this is happening. I'm not sure if its a fitment issue with the three pieces, if I have a bucking bar angle problem, or am I simply pressing too hard with the rivet gun. Perhaps if I am pressing too hard with the gun, the angle inwards is going to increase that angle, lending itself to dumping those rivets down. The more I think about it, I bet that's exactly what happened!

Riveting the right aileron - 3 hours

Well...Having a difficult time riveting the top skins on the aileron to the spar. I have cut down the wood shim to lower the bucking bar which provides a much better angle to the rivet. When eyeing it up it is perfectly flat to the rivet.

But unfortunately the rivet has a tendency to dump down. I tried various configurations of the bucking bar, different shims, positions, ect. They all have a tenancy to slump the rivet down. I am puzzled. I finally defaulted back to the method I had used on the flaps and taped the end of the bar up to give proper offset.

This resulted in an acceptable rivet set. The tricky part is to set the rivets that are directly in line with the stiffeners. Seems that I may need to default back to the other bar setups to clear these.


Not the easiest riveting, but I am happy with how it turned out.

Begin assembly of the Ailerons - 4 hours

With everything primed, I am ready to begin assembly. I had borrowed a small space pop rivet tool which is very much needed to get the rivets into the front nose rib. I can imagine being able to do this with any other rivet puller.




Next I had clecoed the entire aileron together so I could get the nose ribs sitting proper to rivet them to the spar.
 
Bit of head scratching on how to set these, no way I want to pull out the double offset rivet set.
Fortunately my pneumatic alligator squeezer is perfect for this job. Takes a little bit of time to get it set up right. But it does a great job!




Since I am on a roll....Why not keep going. Next I need to set up the ailerons to rivet the top skins to the spar. So I set up some blocks and screwed the aileron to the them.

 Next I needed to set up the bucking bar for the required angle. I used my stubby tungsen bar and wood shim. The wood shim is a bit wide, so I will need to cut it down a tad to get a perpendicular plane on the rivet .

Dimpling and priming the Aileron - 5 hours

I quickly finished dimpling all the outstanding dimples on the ailerons. I used the DRDT every place I could, and the pneumatic squeezer for all the tough areas. For the curved portions of the skin I used the small diameter female die.
Next taking the same approach as documented by Mike Bullock on his RV build page, I used a 2x6 on edge and taped some dowels to it, this allows for the galvanized pipe and leading edge skin to sit nicely so I can begin dimpling the skin.

I quickly realized that using the CS4 male die on the rivet gin (with light pressure) was not the answer, the outer edges of the die mark the skin, its cosmetic, but doe not look great. I will have to buff these out... Grrrr!!! So I took the die off the rivet gun and dimpled them all by hand with a mallet on the rivet die holder. Few light taps does the job. But it is still easy to get that mark. Mental note, use a wooden dowel for the dimple hole....I suspect the pipe is just to hard and the curve and nature of the dimple contributes to those pesky marks.
 
I was now ready to prime. Everything got a nice scrub with 3m scotch brite and a good wipe with MEK. And next came primer.

Drilling the holes for CS4 rivets - 4 hours

In all my wisdom, I hadn't opened up the #40 holes in the bottom of the aileron for the CS4 rivets yet, so I spent a bunch of time re-celcoing all the ailerons together and then drilling out the bottom holes that will require the CS4 rivets. All of the holes where dimpled for #40 which is just fine....but drilling the larger hole in the dimple results in a very sharp edge of the protruding dimple. So again I needed to pull out my dremmel and buff each hole with 3M to smooth the sharp edges on the dimple holes. Extremely effective, but time consuming.

Mental note....Drill these holes #30 from the begining (Be sure to drill ONLY the correct holes) and dimple with the CS4 die. It saves time in the end.