Started closing up HS

January 20, 2010

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I snuck out to the garage tonight for a couple minutes of getting the rear spar riveted into the HS. Before clecoing the rear spar in, I had a few rivets I needed to drill out from yesterday. First, this one, which was sitting a little high.

Down in front!

Easily drilled out and replaced. Then I moved on to two cases of split shop heads. Here’s the first one.

Split shop head #1.

And the second one. I think this happens when I start to set the rivet a little crooked and then try to straighten out.

Split shop head #2. Uglier.

Anyway, I fixed both of those, and took this picture of the new shop head as representative of all three.

It's art to me.

Then, I clecoed the rear spar into the HS and started dropping rivets in. These haven’t been squeezed yet, but I thought it looked cool.

Ready to start squeezing the skin to spar rivets.

Then Ginger came out to ask why I wasn’t inside rubbing her belly.

"What are you doing out here, dad?"

She wouldn’t come on this side of the workbench, but was definitely curious. She was staring at me from under the workbench for about 20 seconds before I realized she was down there.

"Dad, come inside and let me lay on you."

After squeezing all of the skin-to-spar rivets, I needed to find the BSPQ-5-4 blind rivets. Here they are.

BSPQ-5-4.

Here are the HS-708 (rib) to rear spar holes they fill.

Last 2 (4, 2 on each side) holes in the horizontal stabilizer.

Done.

I don't love having these blind rivets showing, but no one will see them when the elevator is installed.

Here’s a picture of the almost final project. I circled about 7 rivets on the bottom side (the HS is upside down here) that I want to replace.  I’ll fix those this weekend, and inspect the top side before calling the HS complete.

Almost done. Looking good.

I ended up spending almost 2 hours outside. Drilled 3 rivets out, set 178.

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Right HS – Primed skeleton, Dimpled skin

January 14, 2010

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Today, I used my lunch hour to swing by NAPA to pick up some more self-etching primer and then get a few minutes of work done before playing with the puppies. Jack and Ginger love it when they get to go outside and play during the middle of the day.

Anyway, I finished edge-prepping, cleaning, and drying the right HS ribs and front spar before priming them.

Then, I broke out the c-frame and finished dimpling the right HS skin. This time, I put a piece of blue painter’s tape (sticky side toward the male (exterior side of the skin) dimple die) between the dies and squeezed them together. I figured this layer of tape would help prevent some of the circles I am getting during dimpling.

3/32" Dimple Dies covered in blue tape.

The resulting dimples don’t have as much of a circle around them, and the dimples are just as deep. I wish I had known that the first time around. I’m not very happy that my right HS is going to end up looking a lot nicer than the left.

It was a little short of an hour today, but I ran a little long yesterday, so I’ll log an hour.

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Squeezed more left HS Rivets

January 11, 2010

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I got some rivets squeezed tonight, which means it was a good day. All of the rivets tonight were either HS-601PP (skin) to HS-706 (tip rib) or HS-601PP (skin) to HS-404/405 (inboard ribs). All squeezable.

The plans have you skip 5 rivets on the top only, but the clecos were doing such a good job of holding the skin off of the table, I decided to skip those rivets on the bottom, too. Also, I only squeezed every other rivet on the tip until I can get the rear spar riveted in. Then, I’ll finish the whole thing off.

On the top of the skin, Van's has you leave the rearmost HS-405 hole open, then every fourth rivet forward of that. Here are my first three squeezed AN426AD3- rivets on the project.

Then I got up to the HS-601PP (skin) to HS-702 (front spar) to HS-405 (aft inboard rib) hole. You can see that the longer rivet they call out (AN426AD3-4, instead of -3.5) isn’t long enough.

Bad picture, but the rivet at the top of the picture is not going to be long enough to form a good shop head.

So, I replaced it with an AN426AD3-4.5.

An unsqueezed AN426AD3-4.5. That looks like it will be long enough. It was.

Then, I spent a few minutes looking over my work from yesterday. It generally looks pretty good, but I must have been distracted during these three or four rivets (at least they are on the bottom of the skin). Not a big deal, but when you look at it in the right light, you can see some small dings.

A couple small smilies and dings. These make me want a swivel flush set. Hmm. It looks like I didn't keep the rivet gun straight. Bummer.

From today, two of the rivets I squeezed didn’t sit correctly in the dimple. They are probably just fine, but I’m going to replace them. (I know, I know, they will be under the empennage fairing, but still, I want them better than they are.)

Only two rivets to replace tomorrow. Better than yesterday's average.

30 quiet minutes today, after the girlfriend and puppies went to bed. I’m so sneaky.

38 rivets tonight, 2 I’ll have to drill out tomorrow, but don’t count against my batting average tonight.

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Finished drilling the HS

January 1, 2010

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Short, but productive day.

It was Jack’s birthday today (he turned 3), so I ran out to Chik-Fil-A to get him is once a year human food treat. A chicken biscuit. Of course, Ginger needed one too (“so she doesn’t feel left out”) and so on, which meant my girlfriend and I also got biscuits. Here are Jack and Ginger.

Jack and Ginger (Jack's on the right) on the beach last summer. Happy Birthday Jack. You're 3 now. Start acting like it.

Anyway, after the birthday festivities (a.k.a. Jack and Ginger inhaling their biscuits), I managed a couple hours on the project. Here, I clamped HS-404 in place after having first marked holes and drilled #40 pilot holes in the aft flange. The instructions have you mark and drill pilot holes in the HS-405, but why drill from aft to forward, hoping you don’t run into edge distance problems when you could drill from forward to aft? For the outboard holes, I did use the HS-405 for pilot holes. You’ll see.

HS-404, with two pilot holes marked and drilled prior to mock-up.

Here are the silver clecos after drilling from forward to aft with my 12″ bit.

Used the #40 pilot holes I previously drilled in HS-404 to drill through HS-702 and HS-405.

Then, I used the previously marked and pilot drilled holes in HS-405 to drill forward through the HS-702 (front spar) and HS-710/714 (reinforcement angles). The 12″ bit really came in handy here.

Then used the #40 pilot holes I made in HS-405 to drill through HS-702 and HS-710 (or HS 714 for the other side). Here, you can see the 12" bit really showing its stuff.

Then, I matchdrilled the rest of the HS-404, which had been clamped in place in the above pictures. After that, I finished match-drilling the rest of the skin for the right side. After you finish and pull the skin off, you can drill the remaining HS-702 holes using the HS-710 and HS-714 angles as guides. Here are the last six holes drilled after pulling off the skin.

Finished drilling HS-710 and HS-714 after removing the skin.

After the skins are pulled off, I’m ready to start prep for final assembly.

After match rilling both skins and finishing the HS-710/HS-714 to HS-702 holes, The skeletons lay ready to disassemble, deburr, dimple, edge finish, surface prep, and prime.

2.0 hours today. Not bad.
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Picked up empennage, inventoried

December 29, 2009

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Well, I’m officially a homebuilder.

After checking FedEx’s tracking website, I saw that they tried to deliver the boxes on Christmas Eve, then again on the 28th and today, the 29th. I arrived home yesterday from the Keys around 5pm, so while enroute, I called fedex to have hen hold the packages at the local facility.

When I got to FedEx, they found the smaller package, but insisted it was the only one. “Hmm, usually they ship them together. Guy said, “if there were two, there would be a ‘1 of 2’ on the label.”

“You sure? Van’s charged me for shipping both packages.” (Although, you may remember that the tracking number online indicated only one package.)

“Positive.”

Huh.

When I got home, I checked the fedex exception slip on the door and sure enough, the driver indicated there were two packages. I drove back out to the FedEx place and pointed this out.

“Oh yeah, we saw another (bigger) package with ‘high dollar aircraft parts” on it, is that yours?”

Grrr.

He continued. “You should have said something when you were here before.”

Grrr.

I can’t complain too much, they tried to get me my tail kit on Christmas eve, so thank you to FedEx. Also, I’ll give Van’s some credit for beating their estimate.

Anyway, I got them home. Because I was gone for the last week, we did Christmas tonight. (Girlfriend, Jack (black lab/Italian greyhound), and Ginger (German shephard/American staffordshire terrier) all exchanged gifts.)

I slapped a bow on each kit, and Jack gave me one, and Ginger gave me the other. Thanks, pups, for the gifts. (How did you guys wrap those boxes without any thumbs? “It was ruff,” Jack said. Ha. Dog joke.) I managed to get away with this because the girlfriend got a trip to a Central American country from Ginger, so the airplane was not a big deal.

Here are the two boxes on my workbench.

Boxes on the workbench.

Starting to unwrap everything. Not surprisingly, (from other builders sites), everyhing was well wrapped and packaged. Van’s delivers the tail kit in subkits, so you have to take out the subkits, unwrap those, then inventory.

Here are the first few subkits.

First few subkits

Here’s the stuff from the 1st subkit.

1st subkit unpacked

And the second subkit.

Second subkit

Here are the fiberglass tips (I can’t remember if this is the third subkit or not.)

Fiberglass empennage tips.

And all the paper from the small box alone…

Paper from just the small box.

Then my iphone died, so I kept unpacking and inventorying (verb?) until I could snap this picture of everything in the kit except the hardware.

Everything upacked, except hardware.

Here’s a picture of the hardware.

Here are the hardware bags.

And then all the paper from the whole kit. (I left the boxes out of the picture.)

That's a lot of paper.

Then I put everything away user my second workbench. Top shelf was horizontal parts on front, vertical parts on back. Middle shelf is elevator parts on front and rudder parts in back. Bottom shelf is skins. I left the hardware in bags for now, I need to stop by harbor freight tomorrow and pick up another storage bin.

Here’s my empty workbench, ready for the real start tomorrow. And here’s a picture of my second bench, with all the airplane parts in it.

Ready to go for tomorrow. Sorry about the weird angle.

I’m counting the inventory hours as build hours, because of the organization and learning part. Some people don’t count them, but I think it is an important part of the process. 1.5 hours.

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