Empennage

Rudder 15 Complete (almost!) (1.5 hrs)

This entry was posted in Empennage Rudder on May 27, 2013 by Peter

Today was the completion of the rudder leading edge. I made a mistake in bending the lower section first, inhibiting my pipe’s access to the upper portion. The result is a very clean looking lower half, with a less tidy upper half. Its not beautiful, but its functional and airworthy, and I’m moderately happy with it.

Here you can see a couple ripples from poor bending technique on my part in the upper part of the rudder. Still looks pretty good, I think.

My wife and the completed rudder. (Actually its not complete… I still need to do the front two rivets on both of the ribs and one corner rivet that I cannot currently access)

Rudder 14 (4.0 hrs)

This entry was posted in Empennage Rudder on May 26, 2013 by Peter

I spent a ton of time on the rudder this weekend with very little progress due to my rivet issue. The solution to my rudder issue is mentioned in the previous post.

I also discovered that I had not clecoed my rudder shim correctly, so I had to quickly create a new one.

Here’s the old shim. I had only clecoed one hole. When I looked in the middle I though I had forgot to drill that hole, and drilled a new hole without bothering to notice that the shim was off center…

Here’s the skeleton all riveted together!

The start of rolling the leading edge…

I very stupidly started at the bottom. I didn’t take pictures of my final efforts for the night and will post them tomorrow…

Elevators 10 (4.0 hrs)

This entry was posted in Elevators Empennage on May 26, 2013 by Peter

I did a lot in the past two days, and unfortunately did a poor job of record keeping. I started out addressing and experimenting with my rudder rivet problem from my previous post. I first tried to trim the AN470AD4-5 rivets just slightly to aleviate the cracking. This didn’t work. Next I tried using a longer AN470AD4-6 rivet trimmed down to the -5 length. This worked, but cutting all of the rivets would be a pain in the butt. Jack Savage told me to heat them in the oven prior to riveting. This also worked, but I don’t like unknowingly changing the properties of the metals. Finally I set the rudder aside as Mike Bullock had agreed to meet me at the airport and give me some rivets he had. Once I tried his rivets, they worked perfectly. I’m convinced I have a bad batch of rivets… they seem extremely brittle.

While I had the rudder set aside, I worked on the elevators. I back riveted all of the stiffeners to both skins. Unfortunately I discovered I had not drilled, dimpled, or primed the trim reinforcement plate. I caught up on that work as quickly as one can. Unfortunately, after I set all of the rivets, I decided two rivets need a couple extra taps. Not paying attention on the second rivet, it was slightly off the back riveting plate. Its pretty nasty looking, but structurally ok. I did my best to take as much of the dent out as possible. This will be one area that will certainly have to have some touchup prior to paint! Thank god it son the underneath!

Here’s the back riveting setup.