Elevator assembly - We're Back!! - 4 hours

I spent a bunch of time this evening on the elevators. I hit a groove and just kept going. I started in on riveting the elevator hinge doublers/reinforcement plates with the AN470AD4-6 rivets. everything went well. I used my handy table that I made to provide the settings of the pneumatic squeezer for a given die/yoke setup. Using my digital calipers I can zero in the proper setting on the adjustable set holder and then squeeze the rivet. The result is a near perfect rivet set with only a small adjustment needed now and then.

 I moved onto the nutplates. I was very sure to go slow and be certain that I was square. I'm extremely pleased with the rivets.

 Like I said I was on a roll so I started riveting the spar and the ribs. This time around...I modified my sequence of riveting slightly from the plans. I began by setting the rivets between the E-702 spar and the E-704 counterbalance rib. 

 I then riveted the E-703 end rib to the E-702/704 assembly. It was slow work but the result is that I was able to rivet everything with the pneumatic squeezer with excellent shop heads!

Started assembly of Elevators - 1.5 hours

I spent a bit of time working on the E-610/611 spar doublers and E-00001 hinge reinforcement plates. I managed to set a few AN470AD4-4 rivets. So far so good.

Priming the elevator spar parts - 2 hours

Not to much to report. I took advantage of a nice day and primed all the parts for the elevator spar. I followed my usual sequence. Wow...I really hate priming.

Countersinking and preping elevator spars - 3 hours

I set off doing a bit of work on the elevator spars. I needed to machine countersink the ends. This was a very quick process as I learned from my past mistakes hahaha. I spent the rest of the time cleaning up the edges and deburring all the pieces.

Elevators: Almost back to where I was - 4 hours

I received the email from Vans indicating that the hole distance is not an issue on the left E-704 counterbalance rib. Simply filleting the washer so it does not make a stress point on the inside radius of the web is acceptable.

I set off again to cleco the E-713/703/704 left and right assembly's to E-702 and the root ribs. At this point the neighbor's boys came to see how I was progressing. I decided that this is a great time for them to help me out. They are surprisingly good at installing and moving cleco's! We then cleco'd the E-701 skins onto the understructure and match drilled as per the manual. It took some time, but it was a pretty enjoyable experience shared with the boys. Everything went well for once...I'm back in the groove.

Edmonton Airshow

It was a sunny day and quite enjoyable when it warmed up. For Edmonton's first airshow in about 20 years....Not too bad. It was pretty disorganized and they just were not prepared for the amount of people. Good show nonetheless. The were about 20 planes on display. A incredible P-51 and a B-25. Ken Fowlers F1 Rocket was there and A cassutt racer just to name a few. We also got to see Pete Mcleod perform in his Edge 540, Carol Pilon, Stephan Trischuck and Bill Carter. A beautiful T-28 Trojan also made a presence.

A Good Day

Still working on the elevator counterweights - 2 hours

The replacement E-714 counterweight arrived in the mail. I set to work on drilling the new - proper holes in the counterweight. After transferring the hole location to the new counterweight, I set up the drill press similar to how I drilled the before. I then cleco'd the counterbalance skin on the E-703/704 spars and then used the #12 bit to drill the holes through the ribs. 

When I removed the counterweights, I noticed that one hole on the left side ribs was a tad too close to the inside radius. (I am a bit stumped how it happened as I used the exact same process I used before which yielded perfect results). Reading on the forums, it appears that this is a bit of a common issue but I will confirm with Vans via Email.