| May 24, 2007 |
| Horizontal Stabilizer |
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| Some of the rivets are darn close to the flange, making it hard to rivet. What we did was: 1) chopped off the head of a bolt and drilled a small hole in it. Then, 2) went over to the grinder and angled the top of the bolt head away from the flange. This allowed us enough clearence to get the rivet gun in there without deforming the flange. |
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| If the bolt method did not work, our plan B was to use my dad's "super-skinny" rivet gun, probably built in the 60's. The problem with this gun, it is very...labor intensive! |
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| Labor intensive or not, it WORKS! Perfect for the forward clips. |
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| Everything riveted. Deciding what to do next. Decided to square up the frame using the blocks of wood. Making sure center line distance is correct, and making sure the tips distance are correct on both sides. |
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| We had already made the ribs previously, but once the frame was in correct position, we realized each one of our ribs was a fraction too long. Here is dad "fine-tuning," if you will, the ribs. One by one we got them all to fit. |
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| Every thing is blocked and squared. Placed the skin on top of our frame just to get a rough idea where everything will lay. It looks like the predrilled holes in the skin will be very close to our center lines... placed on the ribs. Next we drill the ribs on. We finished up a little early tonight 11 PM. I was exhausted! |
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| My QC'r having problems of her own. She is teething, I believe... crying about 75% of the time. This is an added stressor while working on the plane. I would get a lot more done if I had a babysitter, but then I could not afford to build... so what does a person do? Well, I say, "suck-it-up, and press-on!" Here she was looking at an old copy of Sport Aviation... I guess she got a little too close! (How does these things happen?) |