Rudder

The rudder section details quite a few more steps than the vertical stabilizer.  As always, patience is key, I'm trying not to rush through anything.  The first few steps require the separation (cutting) of parts as well as deburring and shaping them to final size.  The shear clips were pretty straight forward and easy to handle.  The stiffeners were a little more challenging, but doable.  To make the long straight edge, I used a long ruler/straight edge matched along the "guide" angle to draw the line down to the end of the stiffener.  I then used the bandsaw to cut roughly along this edge.  I did the fine detail work to create the appropriate edge and angle using my oscillating belt sander.  This allowed me to sneak up on the edge I had drawn previously while giving me a nice flat edge in the end. Pictures of the final edge below.

There's a lot of shaping to do on flanges and ribs (R-903 and R-912 in the rudder) to make sure there's no faceting once the skin is applied.  Once again, I used the bandsaw to sneak up on the final curvature that's shown in the plans.  The initial fit of the skin seemed to be okay and I didn't have to struggle to get the skin on in any particular place.  Based on how much material was moved, I'm betting that some shaping of the lead counterweight balance will be required to fit inside of the cavity and the shop head of the rivets.  Mock ups and other reference pics below.

Rudder horn shaping per plans so that it fits inside the spar during final assembly.

Buy extra clecos.  I doubled my order in the Cleaveland -14 kit and it's paying off.

Time to disassemble everything, but so far looking good.  I didn't take any progress pictures between the mock up and after riveting, but there wasn't too much to see there.  The trailing edge came out very straight, with less than 1/16" spacing in one area.

Rolling the leading edge required a slow and steady process.  I also found that I had to do it in the correct order, otherwise I didn't have enough room for my "rolling tool."  The picture shows that I started in the center section, but once I flipped over the rudder, I finished the small section at the top first, then worked my way downward.  I used vice grips and a lot of downward pressure while rolling toward the trailing edge.  There was very little hand forming that made any difference, so I just kept adjusting the rolling tool but releasing the vice grips and tightening again so I had more room to roll the aluminum.

The rudder is complete, minus the fiberglass.  Total time was about 29 hours for rudder construction.

Vertical Stabilizer

Read the plans, read the plans, read the plans.  Measure twice, cut (drill/rivet) once.  Building this airplane "quickly" isn't a good idea, at least not as my first build.  Looking ahead in the plans, the VS isn't necessarily challenging, instead it provided many opportunities for me to get used to my tools and figure out how to set up my shop/work bench area.  As much as possible, I left all my tools out on the bench and quickly realized what I was reaching for most often.  Once I had a vision of what I would need in the future, I put things away or hung them on the pegboard according to that hierarchy.  We'll see how that plays out in the future, I'm sure changes will be required.

As you can see, the aluminum marks up pretty easily.  I lurked in the forums and talked to the SportAir workshop instructor and I'm not overly concerned about it unless the scratches are pretty deep, which could lead to stress fractures later on.  Most of these could be buffed out with the red 3M pads, but I'm not planning on doing that yet.

The hair should have stood up on the back of my neck when my son asked "Dad, where's the deburring bit for the drill?"  Sigh...by the time I got out to the garage to see his progress, it was too late.  Some of the holes were clearly over-deburred.  I talked to the SportAir instructor about this as well and he said that as long as the 3-3.5 rivet still fits without "play" then it should be fine.  Final pictures with rivets in these holes below (everything turned out fine, but a good lesson learned).  Don't go crazy, you should only see a very small shiny ring around the edge of the whole where you debur the aluminum.

 More pictures of the rear spar with the doubler and rudder hinges attached.  Pay careful attention to which side take the flush rivet heads at the bottom.

Here's the VS mock up, ready for match and final drilling.  

I'm still working on getting the pictures to show up correctly in the blog.  It's a work in progress.  

A couple of build notes for the final assembly and riveting.  Once the ribs were riveted to the front spar, I reattached the skin to the skeleton assembly.  I had to be very careful not to bend any pieces and parts, specifically the tip of the VS-706 flange as the skin went on.  Get an extra set of hands if necessary.

The rivets inside the VS will need to be bucked and it was challenging to place the bucking bar in the correct position while holding the rivet gun flush on the outside of the skin.  I got better after a few attempts, but there were a few cases where the bucking bar was pressed up against the front spar, leaving a few marks in the corners.  I ended up using my thumb as a cushion up against the spar to minimize bar/spar contact during riveting.

Once the rear spar went on, things seemed to be going okay until I needed to rivet close aboard to the rudder hinges and near the heads of the 4-4 rivets along the doubler.  The ones near the rivet heads were doable, but barely.  I did end up messing a few of those up, which had to be drilled out.  Around the rudder hinges, there wasn't enough clearance for the tool, so I had to go back to the bucking bar.  I ran into the same problem as inside the structure, with the bucking bar rubbing against the hinges in a few places.  As always, go slow...the last few pictures above show the final result, which I'm pretty happy with.  It's not perfect, but I'm building on!

EAA SportAir Workshops (Sheet Metal Basics)

A quick note on the SportAir workshops that EAA puts on throughout the year.  Being in Phoenix, the timing couldn't have worked out better to attend the Sheet Metal Basics course last weekend in Corona, CA, which was only a 4.5 hour drive.

I took my oldest son who is also interested in the build (as much as a teenager can be "interested") and we learned a lot over the two day session.  The instructor was outstanding and made the entire class feel comfortable with the setting.  He was approachable and didn't laugh at any of our dumb mistakes, which created a highly effective learning environment.

Over the course of the weekend, there were two projects.  The first was attaching three pieces of aluminum of varying thicknesses to a section of angle.  We attached the pieces using universal rivets (AN470AD) and flush rivets (AN426AD).  The techniques included deburring, countersinking and hand-squeezing.  Pretty straight forward...I made plenty of mistakes!

Next up was a small section of a wing/aileron which took up most of the weekend.  All manner of riveting techniques were used as well as the use of the rivet fence, match drilling and installation of a hinge and some nutplates for an access panel.  Here are the pictures of that project, don't judge me! ;)

Bottom line, it was definitely worth the money to attend the workshop.  The experience gained in trying every type of riveting was invaluable, and I can only hope that I'll get that money back by not breaking/destroying parts of my airplane.  On to the Vertical Stabilizer!

Garage Setup, Kit Arrival, Unpacking

As far as garage setup goes, the single car portion of my garage is dedicated to the tools and work area for the airplane build.  I have a bunch of woodworking tools and lumber that are also interspersed throughout the garage.  I tried to arrange the tools needed for either task (build or woodworking) in the build area.  This includes the drill press, oscillating belt sander, air compressor and mini bandsaw.

Sander, drill press on the left in the back.

Peg board helps a lot with the organization.  The peg board mounted on the wall seems to hold most of the tools I need regularly.  The yellow baskets shown in the picture hold the other random items like drill bits, cleco clamps and deburring tools fairly well.  

I'm 6'5" so the higher bench around the corner provides a nice place to do detailed work without leaning over too much.

The 2'x8' hanging storage is key.  It's up and out of the way in between the garage railing, but still accessible.  I also added an intermediate shelf using 2x4s and thin plywood to provide increased storage space for skins and longer, lighter aluminum parts.  The space is definitely needed.

The DRDT-2 is positioned at the same height as the bench tops to minimize bending of the skins when I get to that point.  I had the floor epoxied as well which provides a surface that is easy to clean up and provides decent contrast when small rivets are dropped.

And we're off!  The kit arrived on Tuesday, September 25th, 2018.  That'll be the date by which I'll time the overall build.  Naturally, there was some setup required prior to that date, but that's my stake in the ground for now.  

Lots of stuff to unpack.  As other blogs have mentioned, the Gorilla tape used to hold everything down in the box is challenging to remove at times.  Go slow and don't be surprised when it pulls the blue protective plastic off with it when removed.  The empennage subkits were neatly organized and easily identifiable.  I inventoried the entire kit over about 3-4 hours and identified only a few items missing.  Vans was apologetic and immediately shipped the remaining items.  Next up, the sheet metal basics course in California!