Jul 25 -- Finish Vertical Stabilzer

At the urgent care clinic yesterday the nurse practitioner told me to be a vegetable. So I compromised by not taking the narcotic pain meds and only working on the RV for five hours.

Finished the stab today, but not before making the same mistake that I've heard about others making. Connected the rivet gun to the high-pressure hose, which bent and beat things up -- you can sort of see the damage in the close-up photo below.

Time: 5 Hours

Jul 23 -- Replace Rivets

Have been away from the RV project, just as predicted, due to work.

Some of the rivets in the rear spar for the vertical stabilizer are "tipped", and the working theory is that 1/8" rivets are too much for a 4" yoke on the squeezer, so the yoke is flexing. So I installed a smaller yoke, drilled our about 15 rivets, and replaced them. Some of them twice. (That's the "you shouldn't do this on a Friday night" effect.)

The photo below shows one of these rivets. This particular one is waiting for my attention tomorrow. So not done -- more of this drill and replace coming up...

Time: 1 Hour

Jul 5-10 -- Vertical Stabilizer

Just because I haven't posted in a while doesn't mean that I have not been building. The vertical stabilizer goes together relatively quickly; and as a result progress has been visible and steady.

I did take time out though, for business travel and to go to the Arlington Fly-In to look at details on other RV-9s.

One step in construction involves drilling lightening holes in the doubler for the rear spar. The prints show the distance on-center between each hole; however that struck me as a way to introduce stacked errors. So for others who follow behind me, I made this chart that shows distances from a common point: the edge. (Click on the image for a much more usable version.) Much more accurate approach, in my opinion.

To call out a few other details:

• In the photo that shows those lightening holes, you can also see where I added nutplates to a rib. Enlarged the skin dimple to correspond...
• Once again I added a conduit to run the vertical length of the stabilizer. Have seen any number of components, from strobes to cameras, to antennas, installed up there.

Total time over these days: 6 hours

Jul 4 -- Vertical Stabilzer

Rain on the Fourth of July provided an opportunity to make a lot more progress than what you see in this photo. Have the vertical stab, skin included, match drilled and deburred. Still need to dimple, countersink, install some more nutplates, another conduit, prime, and of course rivet the whole thing together. This assembly is sure a lot simpler than the horizontal stab, though!

Time: 4.5 hours

Jun 19-20 Shop Work and Vertical Stabilizer

Not a heck of lot of airplane work this weekend. Was the perfect weather to work inside on a plane (low 50s and rain); however had to put out a fire with the bumper sticker site related to address verification. Seems that the Web Service vendor is turning off the old version in 30 days, so I had to code up an update for the new version of the service. Most likely their initial warning about this change wound up in my junk mail filter. The hard part isn't rewriting this -- it's figuring out the code that someone else wrote the first time.

Saturday I spent mega $$ to purchase an industrial-grade air filter for the compressor, and to st up two lines: one for high-pressure air at 100 PSI that the rivet squeezer will use, and another set to 40 PSI or so for the rivet gun. With two lines there is no need to change pressure settings all the time.

Following the instructions provided with the unit, I located it 25 feet downstream from the compressor. Physically the filter and compressor are next to each other -- I simply used a 25 ft coil of hose, hung on the wall, to provide the distance. This is required to allow the air to cool enough that moisture condenses before reaching the filter.

Note the photo below. This was screwed to the wall, which I previously covered with 3/4" plywood as part of the garage remodel in prep for building the plane. You can also see that I marked out "don't drill here" zones to make this worry free. Hmmm, I should become a consultant and charge BP big bucks by selling them a map of the Gulf of Mexico -- all hatched out with a marker...

Which brings us to the galvanized pipe. That vertical run has a fitting at the top for the hose, with a quick-connect fitting. Then there is a 12 inch run with a ballcock at the bottom, intended to act as a drain to keep water out of the filter. There is also a drain on the bottom of the filter. However when it comes to painting I'll still need a desiccant cartridge in the hose ahead of the paint gun.

One final thought about this setup. Do your homework before hunting down the parts. Went to two different commercial shops (one being an auto paint supplier) and the help in each was absolutely worthless. They didn't even know what the filter did! I am done supporting local businesses -- they can't even claim value added in the form of knowledgeable help.

Very little actual aircraft construction: all I did was de-burr and flute the ribs for the vertical stabilizer. You can see the fluting pliers in the second photo. The idea is to correct bend induced in the ribs when the edges were turned up. Not going to re-tell the entire story about fluting here; however it's fun to watch the rib straighten back out and lose the bow that was there before this operation.

Total time: 5 hours, with 0.5 hours on the plane per-se.

Jun 15 -- Start Vertical Stabilzer

Waiting on some nutplates for the horizontal stabilizer, so go started on this. Not a lot to show for 90 minutes, but that is mostly because it took 45 minutes to find the brackets that will hold on the rudder. Sheesh...

Just some clecoing and a tiny bit of match drilling.

Time: 1.5 hours