Nov 5-6 -- Finish Empennage

Last post on July 4, and in between was pretty much all travel. Around the world sounds like the adventure of a lifetime, until you do it twice in ten months...

This weekend was back at the project, and it was momentous! Finished work on the empennage, or at least as much work as can be done right now. Fiberglass tips and final assembly come at the end of the project.

Built trim tab #3, which came out great, assembled the elevators to the horizontal stab, and drilled an important hole in the elevator horns.

But not until a friend with a flying RV came over to eyeball my work. As per one of the photos below, alignment was off a bit once parts were assembled. Everyone told me that this is normal, although that seems odd in a CNC environment.

In order to drill that hole thru the center bearing, I used some punches from Harbor Freight that fit precisely into a wide variety of hole sizes. In this case it was a 1/4" pin that created the dimple to use as a starting point for the drill. After a #40 pilot hole, worked my way up thru a #30 to a 1/4" bit. The #30 intermediate hole included part of my finger, although I decided that assembling the finger at this time might be inconvenient.

I also realized how woefully dull my inherited drill bits are, so I ordered $300 worth of new cobalt drill indexes -- the first time in my life that I actually purchased all the bits new as a set. Probably should have done this years ago.

All parts now hanging on the garage wall, and it's time to start on the wings.

Total Time this weekend: 19 hours

July 4 -- Build Tool to Insert Elevator Bolts

The instructions say that it's time to attach the elevators to the horizontal stabilizer, in order to check clearances and drill another hole. Yikes, this whole assembly process is a royal pain, and it took lots of searching online to see what others did. So here's a post on a tool that I built, and two other tips. Hope it saves others some time. (Sorry, no help on the agony bit...)

First, it's tough to slide a bolt thru the holes because it's tough to align the parts. Someone else posted a tip that allen wrenches make a great pin because the 90 degree bend acts as a handle. Even better, use a small one first, then guide a larger one into place. See below for a photo of the larger inserted into the assembly.

Even with this trick, it's still a pain to insert the bolt. In fact, I was speaking like a pirate while I tried with no success... Then I saw a tool that Dave Parsons built for his RV project. Mine is less refined, but works like a charm! I flattened out a couple of leftover pieces of aluminum that began life as stiffeners. The 1" belt sander worked well to cut a slot and generally shape things, followed by some metal forming in the vise. Wow, does this thing work well!

Finally, it was still tough to slide the bolt all the way home. Cleco pliers solved that!

Next up is figuring out what's rubbing. I am fairly certain that the rubbing comes from a rivet shop head that stands too tall. But not much time this weekend for building. Squandered the available time flying, bike riding, and refinishing the deck. What a spectacular Fourth of July!

Total Time: 3 Hours

Jul 3 Horizontal Stabilizer Completed

Have spent the last week piddling at this; however life prevented dedicated sessions. Today I finally squeezed the final rivet, then hung the assembly out of the way in the garage.

Am spending most of the holiday weekend on the wrong end of a big sanding machine, getting the deck ready to refinish. So not a lot of building will happen.

Time: 3 hours

Jun 29 -- More Nutplates

Tonight I worked on the other side of the HS, incorporating lessons learned on the last rib, but having to work around the fact that the rib is already attached to the spar. Am ready to start attaching nutplates, with holes, dimpling, etc. all finished.

Well, except for one hole that looks too tight. Will re-evaluate that one tomorrow.

Time: 1 Hour

Jun 28 -- Nutplates in Ribs

Had to take a hiatus: first for business travel, and then for more important things such as time with children.

Vans instructions note that you should leave out a few rivets in the HS inboard ribs, in order to install nutplates later to hold on a fiberglass fairing between the empennage and the fuselage. Wait a second... shouldn't these nutplates be installed now?

Sure enough, others have figured this out too -- not always prior to closing up the HS, unfortunately. Bought some nutplates on eBay, ordered rivets to hold them in, took a deep breath and drilled/dimpled/riveted/squeezed.

Of course one of the two parts involved was already installed, because I didn't come to this realization until well into things. However as of tonight the first rib is ready to install. Hopefully the other side will go OK, since one end is already riveted in place.

Time: 2 hours

June 11 More Riveting

Worked on the opposite side of what I was riveting last night. The ribs at both the outboard and inboard ends are not installed yet on this horizontal stabilizer. Want to install nutplates first. At the outboard end to hold plugs for the lightening holes, and on the inboard end to hold on the fairing between the HS and fuselage.

Time: 1.5 Hours

Jun 10 -- Riveting

Not much to say tonight. Clecos disappeared, rivets appeared. Not enough of either...

And unfortunately the other side still looks like a porcupine.

Time: 1.5 Hours

Jun 9 Start Other Side of Horizontal Stabilizer

It's rinse and repeat time. Tonight I set up to start the other half of the HS. Work consisted of setting up the other skin (nose ribs already installed), then using clecoes and finally the rivet squeezer where possible. No noisy riveting, because at the end of my work session it was already 9 PM.

Time: 1.25 Hours

Jun 8 More Riveting

The goal this evening was to finish as much of the riveting as possible on this side of the HS. The inner rib is not ready to rivet, because I want to install nutplates first, in order to make it easy to install and remove the fairing between the HS and fuselage. Those parts are enroute from Aircraft Spruce.

Also have to repeat all of this on the other horizontal stabilizer before installing the rear spar.

Time: 1.75 Hours

Jun 7 Rivet HS Spar

Not much to report tonight. Finished riveting the forward spar on the right-hand horizontal stabilizer. Had to drill out a few and re-do them along the way.

Time: 2 hours

Jun 6 Start HS Assembly

Not a lot done this weekend, in large part due to supplies that failed to turn up in time. (OK, I ordered the wrong rivets in one case.)

First project was to use RTV to affix the plastic conduit in place. Went to NAPA to pick some up, because my Amazon Prime order was a no-show. Also picked up another can of primer while I was there -- sure hope it goes on sale again soon!

Original plan was to drill out some rivets on the spar that I wasn't wild about. I was able to get past that by deciding that ugly was OK :)

So I am starting to rivet the skin to the ribs, and the ribs to the spar. Lots of riveting to go, and am being careful to avoid smileys and to make certain that the rivets are properly formed. Maybe 20% complete on this side of the horizontal stab -- you can see a horizontal line of rivets if you look closely. But I doubt the neighbors appreciate riveting after 9 PM, so I called it quits...



Time: 3 hours

May 29-31 -- Memorial Day Weekend

Three whole days off -- what an opportunity! Quite a bit of work, with results to show.

Day 1
Primed spars and miscellaneous parts, then started to cleco the results back together. The big news, though, is that I installed the first rivet! It also became the first rivet that I drilled back out, because the result sucked. In fact, there were quite a few rivets drilled out due to the fact that I was having problems handling the rivet squeezer. The trick to drilling them out is to drill into the head, then use an awl to twist the head off. A few times that didn't work; however a cold chisel definitely did once the head was weakened by a hole in it.

I finally mounted the squeezer in a vise, and things went much better after that. Can't believe how slick this squeezer is! Wish that I'd had one for my last airplane project.

Day 2
Primed horizontal stab inner skins, and continued to rived the spars. My nemesis, the HS-908 attachment brackets, continued to cause problems. The plan is to re-install all those rivets once I order more. It was a riveting technique issue...

Also picked up some new plastic pipe for conduit in the Home Depot Aviation Department. The final choice is overflow pipe for hot water heaters. Simply cut a metal fitting off one end. No idea right now what I'll install in the tips -- but am guessing that it will either be a camera or a ham radio antenna of some sort.

Day 3
Riveted brackets for elevators on to spars, then attached nose ribs to skins. The middle nose rib on each side is a two-person job, and I am indebted to Jim Piavis who came over to help out with this part of the project.

The plans are not very clear about how to attach fairings, and it's important to install nutplates now if they will be needed later. So email sent to Fairings Etc. for guidance.



Total time this weekend: About 14 hours.

May 25 -- Countersinking

Finally done with the annual Luscombe gathering. Only an hour tonight; however I was able to finish countersinking the horizontal stablizer. Think that the countersink bit is dull though, and will purchase a new one the next time that I order tools.

Now it's time to prime parts and try-fit the electrical conduit that I purchased.

Time: 1 hour

May 16 -- Prime Ribs

Work on the plane is still sandwiched between "real work and getting ready for the Luscombe Gathering in Columbia, CA next weekend. Yesterday I spent the day at Paine Field (KPAE) flying kids on Young Eagles flights. Kids were awesome; however the BEST moment of the day was when the tower transmitted "Boeing 777; you're number 2 to land behind the Luscombe". Of course a few seconds later they changed their mind and told me to switch runways.

Oh yeah, about the RV project...

Today I went "off plans" for the first time. I plan to turn this plane into an electronics platform for things I haven't even thought about yet. Accordingly, I am running convoluted loom as wiring conduit to any location with a fiberglass fairing: in this instance the tips at the end of the horizontal stabilzer. You can see in the photos how I made a jig to hold the nose ribs for drilling. (The ribs were not really primed prior to drilling, but the camera was off with Karin when I made the holes.) Those pins are nails inserted from the back side of the wood after drilling holes. Then I cut them off with a band saw and cleaned up the nail with an abrasive wheel.

Still a few more holes that need countersinking; however I wanted to start priming parts on the weekend when ligth was good. Once again the photo is a reconstruction -- but you can see that I am hanging these parts from lilac bushes to paint them. (It was dark by the time the camera came home, so photo quality is not high.)

There is plenty of controversy and discussion about what primer to use, and how to prep the surface. I decided not to go the alodine route, despite having some of the old-school chemicals in the garage. Once a year or so NAPA sells self-etching primer for 50% off. So I cleaned out a NAPA store in anticipation of this moment. Not every franchise offers it at the sale price -- so I looked at www.napaonline.com to find a store that did. It's TEC 7220. And per the recommendation of others, I cleaned the parts up with Coleman fuel. Just happened to have a gallon in the garage, so the price was right, and it was a great opportunity to find a way to use up the fuel. Only issue seems to be that despite doing all of this outside, Karin is still complaining about an odor in the house.

All in all, a most excellent weekend. Flying, building, and sunshine.

Total time today on the project was 3 hours.

May 10 -- Finish Countersinking HS Spars

Was determined to finsh this step tonight, and it was a pain because I used a Milwaukee heavy (duty) drill, in order to keep bit speeds low. One of the initial issues that I ran into was a wandering bit on the air drill. The countersinking is not quite finished; however this was the majority of it in the horizontal stabs. The bit seems to be getting a bit dull, so it's time to order a replacement. (It served well, building another entire RV ahead of mine.)

Time: 1.5 hours

May 9 -- Countersink Horizontal Spars

Been a few weeks since any activity on the project. Was getting ready to fly the Luscombe to Columbia, CA for our annual event, had to perform the annual on it, and spent a week in Vegas working (Vegas == YUK!).

Finally today I was able to finish match-drilling the new HS-908 bracket and also counter-sink the front spars. Still need to drill the rear ones, but also need to get some work work done this evening.

Been a not-so good weekend though. Saturday I took off in the Luscombe, and just after announcing my intentions and lifting off, I smelled burning electric smells. Radio is now dead, and it smells like the burning was inside of it. Off to the shop Monday AM.

Today was spectacular! Karin and I went hiking this afternoon, and I suffered a severe asthma attack, and was unable to reach the destination -- a mere 1-1/2 miles total each way. Last time I had one of these was in the eighties, so probably need to look into the correlation between asthma and even-numbered decades...

Total time today: 4 hours

Apr 29 -- Drill Spar and HS-908

Despite the many posts about my attempts at manufacturing HS-908 brackets, they still were not right. Latest issue was that they were not quite aligned with each other.

So I manufactured yet one more, then drilled it by clamping it back-to-back with the one intended for the opposite side and match-drilling a hole in the new bracket.

Next, I clecoed the new bracket to the spar and clamped angle aluminum to both of them in order to make alignment perfect. Figured this part out with the help of Google. Wow, this airplane stuff is so much easier than back in the seventies when I last tried to build a plane.

Time: 1.5 hours

Apr 24-25 - More HS Work

Had to take a week or so off in order to do the annual on the Luscombe. So just a bit of work this weekend: another whack at HS-908 brackets, work on the replacement spar, and organize parts. Work will require a week in Vegas starting next weekend, so it's going to remain quiet on the project front.

Time: 3 hours

Apr 12 - Sunk HS Spar

This post was supposed to be titled countersunk HS spar. But in fact I screwed it up so badly that I had to order a new part from Vans. The issue was that I needed to back the spar with something ore substantial in order to keep the countersink guide pin from wandering. As a result the hole became elongated and too large.

I was, shall we say, perturbed. Not really any guidance in the manual about this. Oh well, as long as the piece was a write off, I experimented. Friends who built RV-7s used a dimpler for this application. So I tried one, but it was just too thick to work well. I did try backing the spar with a piece of metal, and some holes in the workbench top. Much petter, but not perfect. Will experiment some more when I have time. However the next evening or two need to be dedicated to day-job projects.

You can see the issue in the photo below. The hole with the rivet is clearly not the appropriate size (used to be), and the one just to the right of it is oval-shaped. You can click on the photo to see a much more detailed view of the issue. (Warning, 4 MB)

Apr 10-11 - Shop Enhancements and Dimpling

The past few days have been as much work on the Luscombe as on this project. Spent a total of 5.5 hours dimpling metal and (mostly) adding more shop lights and carpeting the top of one workbench. Not much, perhaps, but important...

Total Time: 5.5 hours