Category: Empennage

September 28th, 2020

I didn’t do too much work today as I was trying to determine if I could fix the trailing edge of the rudder skin or if I should reorder it. I put the rudder back together to check fitment after doing the dimpling and the rudder trailing edge is ok, but I’m just not sure if I like it. With my C-frame being too low originally and causing that cupping around the dimples it makes it a little wavy. But after sticking a cleco in each hole it smoothed out alot. I’ll have to re-read the instructions too but I thought there was also supposed to be some pro-seal that went on the trailing edge and I feel that if I rivet it down and then put two boards on it and clamp it together for a good period of time it might fix it. I don’t know, we’ll see and I’ll do some research on how best to flatten the skin.

I also spent some time gathering up the horizontal stabilizer parts as I wanted to get that completely ready to go as well so that I can spray the parts for the vertical stabilizer, the rudder, and the horizontal stabilizer all at once rather than mixing a little bit of primer here and there. I even might do the elevators too to get them to the point where they can be primed. Either way it was good to get all of this put together and to check things out.

September 27th, 2020

Page 7-6: Step 11-12

I didn’t spend too much time today on this. I spent alot of time trying to get the platform setup right. I started dimpling the trailing edge and it just didn’t look right. It was cupping and the dies were leaving marks on the skin. So I re-read the instructions for the C-frame and I decided to change hammers from my framing hammer to an 8oz ball pean hammer. I’m also swinging alot softer. It said that it would be a light hit. It takes two hits now to get the dimple done and they look right!

September 26th, 2020

Page 7-6: Step 8-10

Steps 8 & 9 were done very quickly as it wasn’t alot of effort or deburring. The bend in the trailing edge of the rudder was pretty easy with the tool from Cleaveland Tools. I had previous experience using it with the small practice kit.

What I spent almost all of my time on tonight was deburring. Both the rudder and going back and fixing some of my mistakes with deburring in the vertical stabilizer.

It was all of these little notches that were not deburred properly. I went back and fixed it after I bought some new files. I got some small files from Walmart today to get this done. I thought the files I had were small enough but they weren’t.

I had though you only needed to worry about the sharp edges and so I left these areas alone. After re-reading some of the deburring sections in Section 5, I saw that you need to get the broad side of the edge on every single surface. So there went 4 hours into deburring 🙂

September 25th, 2020

Page 7-6: Step 1-7

I spent a lot of time today working on getting everything clecoed together and doing match drilling. The most difficult part was that they wanted a cleco for every hole that you match drilled and in a specific order from the middle of the spar/trailing edge and out. So it was a methodical process that I wanted to make sure I got 100% right. Plus the deburring of the skins before hand and removing the blue film was tricky too.

I’ve read the arguments around leaving the blue film on versus removing it and I feel like I’m just going to remove it. I’m going to prime the interior anyways and the outside is getting painted so if there are very slight scratch marks on the skin, I’m not too concerned about it. Now I just hope some deeper scratches don’t happen.

September 24th, 2020

Page 7-4: Step 4-6, Page 7-5: Step 1-5

I finished the rest of the control horn drilling/countersinking, deburring, and match drilling. I also got the spare deburred and all of the stiffeners and shear clips clecoed together and match drilled. I also finally countersunk the control horn holes that I couldn’t do yesterday. I think it was premature to countersink them yesterday since it wasn’t final drilled yet. I decided to leave it off there since I didn’t have lots of time today.

September 23rd, 2020

Page 7-2: Step 1-3, Page 7-3: Step 1, Page 7-4: Step 1-3

After rethinking and reinspecting the holes I had dimpled in the vertical stabilizer skin, I realized there were just a ton of holes that were misshapen. And after some discussion on Facebook, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to change two things. 1) Speed and 2) Platform. I never built the platform they recommended because I just couldn’t see the need for it. And it as just a recommendation, not a requirement. So I decided to skip on it. I think that was my downfall. I don’t have any one to help me out persay, so holding the skin up while trying to hammer was just a little much.

So I reordered the skin as well as the VS-1015 spar doubler because I didn’t like how the countersinking went. I also built the platform for the C-frame dimpler from the spare wood that I had. I did have to buy some carpet but I think it turned out good!

After that was all said and done I spent alot of time tonight cutting parts for the rudder, deburring, and then doing a few of the first steps of countersinking, match drilling, and clecoing parts together. All in all it was a good day off of work.

September 26th, 2020 – I added 1 hour to this last post as I did more deburring while working on the rudder and realizing a mistake I had made.