Well,
I have to confess... last Sunday when we were working on the plane we
were in a hurry. I knew there was a problem with the nose ribs in
the vertical stabilizer but in our (my) haste I decided to go ahead and
hang the skin. I regret that now because there are a few
permanent bumps in the skin from the nose ribs... oh well, live and
learn. First step today was to pull the skin back off of the
skeleton in order to "massage" the nose ribs a bit. I pulled up
Tim Olson's "Gotcha" page this morning to remind myself of what it had
to say about dealing with the nose rib issue (should have done that in
the FIRST place!) I also wrote Van's... I got 2 different
answers, both which would work. I chose to go the route of
radiusing the corners as you can see here. I wound up taking
about 3/16 off of the front of each flange.
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Here's
a shot of the inside of the vertical stabilizer skin where the bump
was. I draped the skin over the edge of my table and lighlty
tapped the bump a few times to flatten it out some. The results
were not perfect, but definitely acceptable. I then used a
Scotch-Brite pad to sand out the scratches left by the rib. All
that's remaining are superficial scratches that will come out when I
give the skin a final scuffing prior to priming.
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Section
6-3, Step 4 calls for final drilling most of the holes in the skin...
that's a lot of holes! (I bet the wings are gonna be fun!!)
Once I get all the holes drilled out, I think that'll be it for the
night.
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While
I was working on the vertical stabilizer Angela decided to get started
on her own project! She jumped ahead to Section 7 and started on
the rudder. Here are the first few pieces needed for sheet 1 of
the plans.
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7-2, Step 1 calls for separating
the R-1003 top ribs into individual components, R-1003A and
R-1003B. Here Angela is knocking off the remaining tabs left
after separating the two pieces.
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After that comes the two rudder bottom rib parts, R-1004A & B.
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