Miscellaneous shot of me hard at work. Sometimes Van's puts the labeling stickers over some of the prepunched holes. Use a large drill bit like you are deburring it to clear the hole. It works like a charm and doesn't leave a gummed-up sticker clump to make a gap when you attach it.
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Here are all the internal stiffners attached. Now we final drill all of these hole to a #40, remove, and debur. A handy little tip - while the stiffners are attached use your saudering iron now to trace around the stiffners through the protective vinyl. Then after you remove them, the vinyl peels off nicely while you leave the rest of the skin protected. The outside of the skin you still have to do with a ruler or my a steady hand.
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Here's a quick shot of the rudder diagram. After we get the stiffners riveted on, we will begin working on the rudder skeleton.
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Here's a nice shot of the stiffners after we've peeled off the protective vinyl, broke the edges, and deburred. Beautiful shiny aluminum... isn't it pretty? Well - this week we need to break the edge of the rudder skin and dimple it all to get it ready for priming. We're going to have a large batch ready for priming which is a good thing. Until now, we haven't actually rivited anything together so we'll have a nice large batch to do all at once. It will be nice to start assembling some of the stuff to make for some airplane parts. I'm looking forward to having the assembled horizontal stab (and other parts) hanging from our walls. Progress can be a great motivator.
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February 9th, 2005
Here we finished all the dimpling on the rudder. Again - dimpling is by far the most time-consuming of the building process we've discovered thus far. We only have the elevators left to complete the tail assembly (as far as dimpling goes).
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I took a 1/2 day off work and started working on the rudder skeleton while Shannon was at school. There were some parts that needed to be fabricated on this section. Nothing too major, and Shannon has done a good job schooling me on sheet metal. This is the lower assembly of the rudder skeleton (right) next to the spar. Everything fits beautifully after following the directions and we final drill once Shannon gets home and he feels comfortable with my handiwork. Once we get the stiffners riveted to the rudder skin, we'll be able to attach it to the skeleton and final drill before attacking the hard part - rolling the forward edge of the rudder skin. We've been looking through many other RV builders' websites to get a good idea how to do this part. Stay tuned to see how it turns out! (or we'll have to order another skin and start all over.
UPDATE: This Rudder Control Horn Brace had to be scrapped. We did not have edge distance by folling Van's directions. See our new part below.
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