Category: Empennage

Spent most of the day today getting these rivets done. Got my son Brendon involved who did a good job at running the rivet gun. Luckily we both have a music background so we based his count on 1.5 beats at 60 bpm. LOL

She’s starting to look like a tailcone again after yesterday’s work! I got the final F-1012 bulkhead put together and then I got all of the bottom and side skins put together with the frames and bulkheads. I got the front section of the stiffners riveted and then I just put the rivets in the rest of the holes on the sides. I plan on working on finishing those today and then flipping over the tailcone to do the bottom. Or maybe turning it on it’s side so that I can buck the rivet while the boys run the riveting gun. Either way, here are the pictures from yesterday’s work!

I got a tiny bit of time tonight to work so I was able to complete the F1011 Bulkhead and install the nutplates for the F-824B cover plates in the side skins. I had to figure out what to do since it didn’t call it out so I dimpled the nut plates and used an AD426-3-4 rivet to get it in. It worked out fine.

I was lucky on Monday and Tuesday to get a good amount of time to dedicate to working on the plane. I dimpled a large portion of the side skins myself and I then got both of my boys to help me out with the rest of the dimples. Luckily I’ve not seen any cracking in the dimples as I don’t think my skins were laser-cut as the recent notice from Van’s Aircraft told us about the recent cracking issues. I do suspect that my wings might fall in that boat but we’ll see.

Tuesday I talked with a friend and fellow member of my local church about my painting issues and he has a turbine powered compressor that he said was excellent for this kind of work. I decided to give it a try. It definitely made the painting much easier and relieved some of the issues I had where I was seeing indications of moisture, but I still have some technique issues I have to work out. The gun also had issues with leaking on the top which ended up requiring me to tighten it almost to an extreme. It’s almost as if that lid should have had a rubber seal on it but it didn’t.

After priming the parts, I was able to put together the bell crank, the battery trey and the aft bulkhead. I put the 1012 bulkhead together with clecos but I was tired at that point as it was 10PM. I’ll work on getting that assembled tonight and keep moving forward.

I finally got a block of time today to work. I got the dimpler out and I got the top and bottom skins dimpled. Not much else to report here. I did get a chance to involve my daughter for the first time as she helped me hold the bottom skin while I maneuvered it on the dimpler table. It was good to watch her light up when I asked for her help.

I finally got some time that wasn’t dedicated to school music programs or church related activities. All of the frames are dimpled and the battery and bell crank parts are prepped too. I skipped some steps to do that as I need to clear my work table to do the skin dimpling. I’ll probably clear the table tonight and get the dimple setup for the skins ready to go.

This tight spot dimpling tool came in clutch again. It is still ever so slightly under dimpled no matter how much I keep hammering but it is what it is. But this was a live saver for the F-1012B which I couldn’t get my pneumatic dimpler in.

It’s been a bit since I’ve had time to build. I got the longerons countersunk and I did the #6 screw hole dimples on the skins and the cover plates. I hope to get more time to work on this tomorrow and the rest of this week (especially this summer) as the kids activities are winding down and we’re starting to get into summer.

I spent quite a bit of time deburring the parts and inspecting to see if there were places we were causing problems with the ribs to the skin with marring. I goofed up on some stiffeners and countersunk on the wrong side. They had a picture pointing to one side but then the text said countersink the other side. It’s issues like that that are tripping me up. Either way, I reordered those parts along with the elevator trim tab parts. Hopefully those will come in soon and I can get moving again.

This was a long day LOL. I spent 8 hours in total across Saturday (6) and Sunday (2) to get this far. It looks great and I am hoping to get through the rest of the initial assembly by the end of this week. We’ll see as I had originally hoped to get this all done this weekend but time slipped away from me.

I got started on the rear bulkhead and there is a piece you need to manufacture that braces between the rear bulkhead and the rudder stop stiffeners. I got it cut out and was preparing for drilling when I saw that the tailcone had a slight twist in it. I decided to go to Facebook and see if there was any previous question on a tailcone twist and none had posted about it. I went ahead and put my neck on the line to see what answers I would get and luckily out of all of them I did get a few that answered my question rather than making fun of my tool choice or that I had left the blue protective material on the skins. LOL. I drilled ahead and got it perfectly level! I was super happy with the outcome! I wish I had gotten pictures of the final level measurement. I think I was just so happy that it came out perfect that I was excited to move on.

I finalized all of the drilling for the longerons and decided to disassemble to deburr some parts and remove the large quantity of shavings that had piled up. I also felt it was time to get the skins uncovered since most of the work that could scratch them up was done. I am halfway done putting it all back together and hope to finish the assembly and match drilling today.

One tool that I am very happy to have purchased was this tight area drill accessory. Boy this saved my bacon as there were 8 super tight areas around the bellcrank ribs that I couldn’t get even my air drill into. This tool is totally worth the cost!