Mistake!

While riveting the horizontal stabilizer, we unknowingly riveted a few wrong holes. Earlier in the process of building the HS, Van's tells you to tape off a few holes until they are ready to be riveted. We did this, but the four center holes were taped off incorrectly. This happened because I accidently counted the wrong number of holes; the plans show holes that are drilled in the future but aren't yet drilled on the HS spar. We drilled out the wrong rivets, but they were covered by the rear flange of the 405's and it was difficult to get the shanks out, after a few attempts though we got all four out, but we botched up a hole pretty bad.
We decided that we would fix this hole with a BSPQ 5-4 blind rivet. They're strong and they have a larger head since they're a 5/32 shank. This shall take care of our problem. We'll also have to use these in the holes that were supposed to get riveted but didn't get taped over in the first place. Pictures will come soon.

Riveting Horizontal Stab

Today was succesful and busy! Dad and I woke up bright and early today and got our stuff together and put it all in the truck. We made our way over to the airport and got some breakfast at the cafe and talked to a couple of friends, Jack being one of them, who has helped us a ton already and offers much respected advice. After our breakfast we went on down to our storage garage and got to work on the HS. We started by finishing up the back dimpling on the HS-601 skin and this took us about twenty minutes.

Once the dimpling was done we went straight to riveting. Following the manual we started by clecoing HS 707 to the top of the skin and then riveting it. This wasn't too difficult, but the second step proved to be tricky. We clecoed on HS 706 at the tip of the stab and then clecoed the bottom flange of 707 to the skin. At first we thought it wasn't going to be too hard. Wrong. Clecos are a wonderful thing, when they're being used under low-stress situations that is. Without taping the trailing edge of the stabilizer the clecoes would just pull out of their holes on towards the leading edge. We copied Mike Bullock's method and used a block of wood sandwiched between the skin and the bottom flange of HS 707, and used duct tape holding the trailing edges together to keep it in place. This made it a bit more workable and we were able to install 707 exclusively with solid AN rivets.

After 707 was all set in, we installed the front spar assembly and clecoed it all together. Using blind rivets (we realized that we were only supplied with about seven LP 3-3 blind rivets, but luckily Jack had quite a supply of these, so after a quick visit to the airport we were back in business) we secured HS 708, 702 and 707 together and began riveting the front spar to the skin. After ten rivets or so we finally got into the groove and moved right along. 708 was next, and was riveted to the skin after the front spar. We used the AN4 rivets to attach 702 to 706 and these were the last rivets that required using the rivet gun. The last of the rivets were able to be set with the hand squeezers and we saved this for when we got home. These came out beautiful and it really felt like it had some structural integrity! We blind riveted 708 to the rear spar assembly and the horizontal stabilizer was all riveted! (well almost, see the error post that follows this.)

Drilled Counterweight for Rudder

Today we were able to drill the counterweight to the counterweight rib for the rudder. We were waiting on a 3/16" drill and dad was able to find one at his work. Perfect! We also got the bottom rib, horn brace, horn, and front spar of the rudder riveted together. This proved to be a bit tricky, and we initially tried to assemble it all with solid AN rivets. This didn't work though because we didn't have the right yokes for our squeezer and the small bucking bar just didn't cut it for the AN4 rivets. We decided to take the optional route suggested by Vans and we used four blind rivets on the bottom of the horn brace.

Big Day of Progress

The title says it, we made a lot of progress today. We packed everything up (well almost.. we had to make a couple trips back to the house) and took it all to our workshop. We were able to back dimple the rudder skins and back rivet the stiffeners on. This took a little finessing to get our method down and before we did we made a few dents in the thin .020" rudder skins. After the first row of holes we had our technique down. Initially we used a back dimpling rivet set and a steel plate to dimple the rudder skins. The 3X rivet gun proved to be a bit to strong and we got a few lovely impressions of the back dimpling rivet set in our skins.. Then we took out the set and decided to tap it with the side of one of our bucking bars. This was much more controllable and you can hear a distinct "ping" when the dimple is done.

Here's our back dimpling rivet set (left) and our back riveting set (right). The left one cost us $50.... was it worth it? Yes. The face is mounted with a swivel and almost elminiates the potential of denting your skins. Though it does only dimple 3/32" holes, that's the majority of the holes in the airplane, so we don't really need one that does 1/8" holes.

Once the rudder skins and stiffeners became one, we moved on to dimpling the vertical stab skins. Since this is .032" thick, we didn't have to use our previous method of back dimpling. We decided to use the rivet gun with the set and it turned out beautiful, plus it was a bit faster.

We then moved onto the somewhat daunting task of riveting the skins to the skeleton. We've got the hang of it now, but the first few rivets proved to be a bit dificult. In order to somewhat preserve our primer on the inside of our skins and on our ribs and spar, we wrapped our bucking bar in som 3M masking tape. It just provides a bit of cusion and prevents scratches. After we got our technique down we got into our rythm and the rest of the rivets went quite smoothly. The AD3-? rivets are much easier to squeeze too compared to the AD4's, this was a nice treat and they turned out very nice. We set our first blind rivets on the airplane tonight too, but these were simple to set, and once the rear spar was all riveted to the vertical stab it was complete and it's definitely inspiring to continue on!

Elevator Stiffeners

Back to work on the airplane finally, it seems like it's been quite a while since we've been able to do any work on it. Tonight was all about taking care of the elevator stiffeners and getting them ready to be primed and riveted. We haven't put the horizontal or vertical stab skins on yet but that's coming tomorrow, Dad and I are definitely going to get a lot done. So in the mean time we've been trying to get as many parts ready as we can, doing little things here and there. We got the stiffeners drilled to the skins and we also devinyled the elevator skins. Once that was done Dad went to bed and I got to deburring the skins, he had already deburred some of the stiffeners earlier so the rest of those will be next. But this was all we were able to do for tonight, and I'm tired... And yes, I did get a haircut.

Cleaning

So far our workshop for building the RV has been our house, and an additional room on the side. It's been working well, and we don't mind having dinner with airplane parts all around us, but we decided that we needed to tidy up some things around our working areas. We spent well around 3 hours just cleaning and organizing our work rooms today and we made a lot of progress. Though it isn't direct progress on our project, it'll definitely make things easier and much more convenient. Before and after pictures will come soon. Also, my girlfriend stopped by today to surprise me and I was able to show her our progress on the RV. She thought it was awesome! She's definitely great.