Mar 25 -- Pick up Wing Kit

Does this time count towards building hours? :)

Picked up the Wing kit at Van's Aircraft, just south of Portland, OR. Went down the previous afternoon via Amtrak (bullet train from London to Paris could teach these dudes a few things...). Next morning I rented a U-Haul and picked up the wings for the drive back to Seattle.

Will leave the U-Haul saga out of this (executive summary: U-Haul #FAIL), other than to say that as the photo indicates, there was not much inside the truck. Needed a 17 ft truck in order to accommodate some long pieces such as fuselage longerons.

Once home I inventoried the loot over the weekend. Came up with some errors on Van's part, so it definitely pays to spend the time looking thru the kit. Going to be a while before these parts get used: still need to finish the empennage, and the reality of business travel is also setting me back.

One great delay though: NASA invited me to a Shuttle launch in April. I'll be one of 100 people at a TweetUp. Can't wait!!!

Mar 5 -- Elevator Trim Tab

Lots of "enabling" work today.

Started by melting plastic off the outside skin of the elevator, then drilling and deburring both the skin and trim tab rib. Didn't even bother with clecos before match drilling, because when I lined parts up it was obvious that once again CNC had everything spot on.

But most of the time was a matter of cutting foam for ribs and also some wood for forming blocks. Once again the miter saw came in handy with its clean cuts. So did the table saw.

Total Time: Can you believe that I burned over 4 hours on this?

Feb 26 -- Rivet Left Elevator Bottom Skin

Technically this is two days, because a couple of days ago I riveted the gusset on to the rib. What a pain -- over an hour and about 6 drilled rivets later there were 2 installed rivets. Some fool posted on their site that out of 15,000+ rivets, they only drilled out 200 or so. Calling BS on that stat...

Today was just a bit of time on the plane. Riveted the bottom skin to the E-901 spar, then attached the Counterbalance assembly to the spar. This is the reverse order of the instructions, and works out better. One pair of rivets buried way down inside connects the counterbalance assembly directly to the spar. I used (gasp!) pop rivets. Out of site, just as strong, and the result is a much better grip than trying to get in there and buck a standard rivet.

Next up will be the trim tab spar. But I need to go heads down on work for a week or so, meaning that all progress will stop for now.

Total time: 1.5 hours

Feb 23 - Backrivet Lower Stiffeners, Install Trim Servo Reinforcement Plate

Tonight I installed the nutplates on the trim servo reinforcement plate, then installed the plate on the lower skin. Next up was backriveting stiffeners to the lower skin, with some NAPA gasket material behind them to dampen vibration that others report causes cracks in the skin.

Total Time: 2 hours

Feb 22 -- Re-do the Elevator Trim Mounting Plate

The first run at this plate didn't go so well: see the "before" version on the left in the photo below. In my attempt to counter sink the holes for nut plates, the countersink bit walked and ruined the piece by decorating it with ovals.

The replacement part showed up today. This time I enlarged the #40 pilot holes in the part, and then drilled #40 holes into hard maple, in order to provide a hole that would prevent the bit from walking. What a difference!

Stopped for the evening after counter-sinking, deburring, cleaning, painting, dimpling.

Total Time: 1 hour

Feb 21 -- Rivet Spar to Left Elevator Top Skin

Tonight I riveted the E-902 spar to the top skin of the elevator. About 20% of the rivets could be squeezed; the rest were accessed by clamping the bottom skin to the table and then spreading the top skin so that it was possible to get a bucking bar in there to buck the rivets, two at a time.

Backriveting doesn't work here, because the skin flexes and it is not possible to keep the rivets flush against the steel backplate.

I'm learning to cut objectives down into smaller sessions. Get better results when I slow WAY down!

Total time: 1.5 hours

Feb 20 -- Backrivet Stiffeners

Back-riveted the stiffeners to the top skin, with ProSeal under them to act as a vibration absorber. Was able to rivet a couple of lower ones too, before the ProSeal was too set up to be usable.

Bunch of rivets are going to need to be drilled out and re-set, because the shop heads are messed up. tough working conditions in there, trying to spread the skins enough to rivet. Don't want to clamp them open, because that damaged the other elevator.

Also cut down some angle iron into flat steel plates to use for riveting in tight places. The EAA Website has a great video tip on how to do this.

It got exciting though, because I did the cutting on the table saw, and the sparks ignited about 8 cubic feet of sawdust inside the saw base! Was time to clean it out anyways...

Total time on the plane: 1.5 hours.