Empennage - September 2005

9/1/2005	1.5h	Alright. New month started out well time wise, not so good with skill. Man I put in some crappy rivets today. I finally riveted all of the stiffeners in place. I started these in July and am just now riveting. Sad. Anyhoo. Most went well, but I ended the evening drilling out about ten of them. I was not paying close enough attention and the ones closest to the bend in the right elevator tended to not lay flat. I'll put new ones in tomorrow, though I'm not exactly sure how to keep it flat.
9/3/2005		No real time on the plane today, lots of other activity, but Katy and I did go out to the EAA 105 pancake breakfast at Twin Oaks. Lots of RVs in the area.
9/4/2005	6h	A good day. Finally finished riveting the stiffeners, I replaced the ten rivets I had to drill out, and only messed one more up bad enough to replace. Back-riveting when there is a sharp bend is tough. To round out the day, I used the bending brace, possibly too aggressively, but it looks okay. Now I've got the sharp point in the trailing edge. I clecoed and matched drilled the sub-structure, counter-weights, and skins. Ready to go with edge prep and deburring before I prime, dimple and rivet. Altogether, other than the fact that it's started to get cold, a good day.
9/5/2005	4h	Another good day. Did the edge prep, deburring and priming for all of the substructure for the left and right elevators. My priming skills seem to have taken a vacation as well. Not particularly good, but effective. I'll be glad to move on to the fuselage and wings and beyond the basic assembly parts that I'm doing now. In other news, I've already done more than 60% of the activity for all of last month. Good stuff.
9/5/2005	0.5h	Not much, but a little bit of work today. Dimpled most of the holes for the right elevator substructure.
9/6/2005	0.25h	Even less time than yesterday, but I accomplished more since I was already set up for dimpling. I went through and dimpled all of the parts for the left elevator substructure. Up next is the skins.
9/10/2005		No time spent on the project, but a full day of aviation. We went out to the Oregon International Airshow with Bob and Michele Schaffner. We just missed the EAA 105 flight, but caught a bit of it when passing by on the way to the parking lot. I'll check out the video later. Good show, though it was overcast and rainy for part of it. Ended the day with the Thunderbirds, which were still cool, though the program was not as impressive as it once was.
9/11/2005	2.5h	I dimpled the right skin, countersunk some places that were too small to dimple on the substructure, then put together most of the left and right substructure. I had to use the rivet gun which I haven't used in a while. It's not firing quite as smooth as I remember. I need to make some bending blocks out of wood so that I can finish prep on the left skin. Just wasn't all that into it today
9/17/2005	3.0h	Good day today. I started out putting together the first four rivets connecting the 713 piece that extends out to the counter-weight and the main skin. I then followed on with some Blue RTV squeezed into the spaces between the reinforcement stiffeners at the trailing edge. I then just worked my way around with the hand squeezer and set all of the flush rivets. The right elevator is basically done, minus rolling the leading edge and the fiberglass.
		I then started in on the left elevator by making a bending block out of a two by four scrap. The bends are the absolute best around, but they'll do. I think I'm going to take chance out of it and put a flush rivet to hold the bent pieces together. The only bad part out of it is that the lower bend started a little crack in the corner. I might have to drill stop it and put a rivet in. Glad it's on the bottom. Ready tomorrow to add the hinge, and start work to close the left elevator. I also had the chance to meet Rob Martinez who lives almost in my neighborhood and is building an RV-4. Always nice when other builders stop by.
9/18/2005	3.5h	Another fairly good day, though I was slowed by insufficient planning. You'll note I did not get to what I thought I would with the hinge and putting the substructure in the skin. I had missed putting the nut plates on the inside of the attach point for the trim servo. I ended up carefully countersinking the rivet holes by hand and then painfully attaching them. I was able to use the squeezer for several, but on a few I had to use the rivet gun with a small flush set. I also dimpled the skin and then realized another snafu with the rib that is in front of the trim tab. Only the bottom is supposed to be dimpled, and the top is countersunk to allow the hinge to attach beneath. Okay, no problem. Following that, I took out the electric trim kit and took a look, with an eye toward what is necessary to put in place before I close up the elevator. Things are basically in place and ready to go with the hinge and closing things up. (really)
9/19/2005	1.0h	I started attaching the bottom skin to the sub-structure, not a continuous hour, but I spend some time as the Verizon guy was connecting the FiOS internet connection. 15Mbps connection. Very nice. I was able to download an audio book from Audible.com at almost 2MBytes per second. Also known as really fast.
9/24/2005	1.0h	Finished attaching the bottom portion of the skin to the substructure. I put pop rivets in for the ones that extend past the hand rivet friendly area and one extra pop rivet close to the lower bend to stop that small crack. Read the Trim tab directions and started work on that.
9/25/2005	2.5h	Okay, so I'm probably not putting my time to the best use with all these short visits to the project. I started out making a block to bend the trim tab. I then bent the trailing edge, and put much cleaner bends on the trim tab than I did on the elevator. I match drilled and prepped all of the parts, then primed and set them out to dry.