Two of the nose ribs will have
the elevator trim cables run through them. Our plane will have
electric trim for the elevator (the Cessnas we flew didn't even have
this!) Angela messured out the location of the holes and then
used the drill press and a unibit to 'rough them in'.
After roughly drilling out the
holes, she then used a dremel tool to grind away the remaining metal to
the final shape. She's getting us pretty close to a point where
we'll be forced to prime some parts before we can go any
further… I better finish up the vertical stabilizer!!
(8-2 step 4): I
went back to the plans to figure out just exactly what pieces I needed
to do. Here are the two spar doublers, and the spar caps, along
with the flange bearing after they've been scuffed up. The top
stringer hasn't been touched yet and is included as reference... but
after seeing the pic it doesn't make a really good reference!
I'll have to get another one tomorrow.
(8-5 step 8):
And this is where I'll be leaving off for the night. These
spars have a lot of surface to be cleaned up! For the vertical
stabilizer I scuffed the skins by hand, and wasn't real impressed with
the results. The primer seemed to fragile and actually chipped
off in some places. This time I decided to take a little more
aggresive approach by using either a scotchbright wheel or a roloc disc
on a drill. It seems to work a bit better, although it also
seemed like it took a long time. I guess comparing it to going
through the whole alumiprep/alodine process it isn't all that
bad. I'll finish this spar up tomorrow night.
(8-7 step 5): Angela decided
she had been away for too long so she decided to jump back in and
finish up the cradles that we'll be needing to assemble the horizontal
stabilizer. There are 4 of these and the horizontal stabilizer will
sit nose down in these. Here she's attaching a piece of angle that
will be used to screw these to our work tables.
(8-2 step 4): Now I'm
finishing up the last part before priming... the HS-1003 rear spar.
The inside radius bends require a bit of a light touch in order to
retain the alclad layer so I did these by hand. Next step... clean
'em, and prime 'em!
Once the priming was done we pulled the pieces down and surveyed the
damage. There were actually quite a few missed spots. Some places on
the undersides were bad enough that we had to make an effort to cover
them up so we mixed up a small third batch and Angela used a brush to
touch up what I missed. I think I may go back to laying everything out
next time.
While I was getting set up for priming, Angela deburred the remainder of the inspar ribs... fun, fun! We figured we have enough pictures of her deburring so no Angela deburring pics here!
(8-3 step 1): Having not seemed like we made any "real" progress in a while we decided to assemble at least something before calling it a night. It was getting late so the easiest thing to "claim" was the inboar hinge bracket assembly. Making sure the brackets were clamped to a flat surface, we used the remaining primer to wet-set the six rivets (why not, it was just going to go to waste anyway!) and then riveted the assembly together. Tomorrow we'll start assembling the spars!
 |
 |
While I was getting set up for priming, Angela deburred the remainder of the inspar ribs... fun, fun! We figured we have enough pictures of her deburring so no Angela deburring pics here!
(8-3 step 1): Having not seemed like we made any "real" progress in a while we decided to assemble at least something before calling it a night. It was getting late so the easiest thing to "claim" was the inboar hinge bracket assembly. Making sure the brackets were clamped to a flat surface, we used the remaining primer to wet-set the six rivets (why not, it was just going to go to waste anyway!) and then riveted the assembly together. Tomorrow we'll start assembling the spars!
Here's a shot of the horizontal stabilizer rear spar with all the
elevator hinge brackets and the doubler permanently attached. We're
holding off on attaching the inboard hinge bracket in the center
because it attaches with bolts and we still need to get a torque wrench.
(8-6 step 1): After the rear
spar came the horizontal stabilizer front spar. The doubler on this
one is slightly larger, and the spar caps also sit inside the flanges
on the opposite side so there's even more beef here than on the rear
spar! Nice!
The horizontal stabilizer attachment brackets attach to the doubler
side of the front spar. These are pretty thick also requiring -9
(9/16" long) & -10 (5/8" long) rivets to reach all the way
through! This proved to be too large for the adjustment available with
our sqeezer yoke combination so we wound up bucking the 9 rivets in
each of the brackets. Angela shot while I bucked... lots of fun, and
our first real test of "team riveting"! We did pretty good, however, I
think complacency set in a little at the end. We had to drill out one
of the last rivets we did... a pain since this was the thickest
material yet (i.e. the longest rivets we've used so far!)
And the finished installation of the doubler and brackets...
(8-8 step 1): Moving right
along... I radiused the forward corners of the Nose ribs in order to
avoid the "bumps" in the horizontal stabilizer skins that we
experienced in the vertical stabilizer skin. After I did this Angela
clecoed them to the front spar and match drilled the two additional
spar holes into the nose rib flanges. After this, the inboard inspar
ribs were attached and the additional center hole was match drilled
into it. Now that the spar, the nose rib, and the inspar rib all had
the same 5 holes, she came back with #30 drill and final drilled all
the holes.
(8-8 step 3): After that came
the rest of the nose ribs (cleco, final drill, mark for removal later)
& then the rest of the inspar ribs (cleco, final drill, mark for
removal later). Here, Angela threw the stringers on for good measure
and to get an idea of what all the "guts" of the horizontal stabilizer
look like... pretty cool! Next time we'll get this thing in the
cradles so Angela spent a little time before bed getting those finished
up. Should be pretty cool next time :-D
This is a shot showing the holes that we misdrilled in the front spar a
while back (the marked holes with the gold clecoes) Prior to putting
the front spar assembly in the cradles I had to open these holes up to
1/8" to match the larger holes in the front spar. These will be final
drilled to #30 when we final drill the skin holes.
(8-9 step 1): Angela took a
break & came in to get some hands on! We dropped the stringgers in
place and then started clecoing the skins to them and the inspar ribs.
With two of us doing this it wasn't too bad!
(8-9 step 2): Next step was to drop the rear spar assembly in place. Once in there, Angela clecoed it in place.
(8-9 step 3): Once the rear
spar assembly was clecoed in place we got to final drill the rear spar
to the inspar ribs. After the rear spar we clecoed in the stringer web
between the exposed part of the stringers in the middle of the
horizontal stabilizer. Once in place I final drilled it with the
stringers, and then to the inner two inspar ribs. This was the first
use of our angle drill... this thing is much louder than I expected!
(8-9 step 4): And the final
step before taking all of this back apart… final drilling the skin
holes. Angela & I tag-teamed this for a while, before we headed
off in search of a torque wrench to attach the hinge bracket we left
off the rear spar assembly a while back (we weren't sure what time the
stores close today being a holiday) Once back, I got back on it while
Angela finished up what she was working on earlier in the day. This
was a lot of repetative stuff, but the biggest deal was making sure
none of the holes were missed.
Next time, we'll tear all this
down (bummer!)... but it means we're close to putting it back together
permanently! (woohoo!)