Half of the mental challenge of building an airplane is getting the courage to start on a challenging step, especially when you have so much time already invested in a part. The most recent case of this for me was… Read More »Rudder Trailing Edge Riveted
I made solid progress on the rudder today. Slow and steady tends to be more successful for me than hurrying up and having to redo things. I decided to proceed with the recommended 3M VHB tape method for the trailing… Read More »Rudder Closed Up
I had previously prepped and primed all of the rudder parts so I was able to jump right into riveting today. First up is riveting the rudder horn and bottom rib. Everything was easy to access here with the pneumatic… Read More »Rudder Riveting
I reviewed my work yesterday with our local EAA Technical Counselor before proceeding with closing up the vertical stabilizer. Thanks Larry for stopping by – much appreciated! We decided to replace one rivet where a rib flange tab was separated… Read More »Vertical Stabilizer Complete!
First rivet set! I started assembling the vertical stabilizer today with my father-in-law. Most of the rivets in the vertical stabilizer assembly are able to be set with a pneumatic squeezer (except the skin). The pneumatic squeezer was easy enough… Read More »Vertical Stabilizer Riveting
I spent several hours today finalizing all of the rudder parts to get them ready for riveting. The work I had left to do included deburring the holes in the skin, dimpling the skins, flanges, stiffeners, and ribs, countersinking the… Read More »Priming the Rudder Parts
I had a couple of hours to work on the rudder skins. I finished match drilling, deburring of the holes, and final deburring of the skin edges.
With all of the parts prepared for the rudder, I started and completed the initial assembly. Stiffeners, shear clips, reinforcement plates, and the rudder spar have been deburred and match drilled through page 7-6 Step 5. Next up is match… Read More »Rudder Initial Assembly
While the primer was drying on the vertical stabilizer I got started the rudder. The rudder starts with a lot of trimming of larger parts into smaller parts. I finished all of the trimming, shaping, and deburring and called it… Read More »Getting Started on the Rudder
I cleaned, etched, and primed one side of the vertical stabilizer parts and inside of the skin this evening. The paint booth worked great! I followed the method described by RV8SA on YouTube (Stewart Systems Prime Video). I purchased the… Read More »Priming the Parts for the Vertical Stabilizer
