4 hours.
Finally got a chance to finish up the tail section. I fabricated and installed the rudder stops, hung the rudder and verified it has 35 degrees of travel both ways. This was slow going because once again, there was a lot more measuring and confirming than actual work. If you’re doing the slow-build flavor, you can do these before you put the aft deck or the top skin on, which would make it a little easier, but it wasn’t too bad. My main concern was having enough edge distance in the F-712 bulkhead flanges and the j-stringers after drilling. What you can do though, is use the vertical rows of existing rivets on the skin/F-712 to extend a line down to where the rudder stop rivets will go, then extend a line back using the rivets in the skin along the j-stringer. Doing that will get you where you need to be. This picture stinks, but what you’re seeing is a view under the horizontal stabilizer. The little black nub in the middle of frame is the rudder stop. The weird stuff in the background is the plumbing from when we ripped out the sink.
After that, it was time to do the canopy latch plates and finish the seat back bulkhead crossbar that only gets a cursory blind-rivet at the factory. the holes for the latch plates are OK, although they could be better. However, at this point, I’m filing them under “if it bothers me later, i’ll redo them then.” There’s also a little cut you have to do to what on a boat would be called the gunwale, I don’t remember the part number right now, but you have to slice off enough to let the tipup canopy frame ride on the structure below and latch into the square holes in the plates. There’s also the matter of the reinforcing angle holding the whole dingus together. The way it is, you’ll never rivet the side skin to the main longerons. So I notched (smooth, round, 1/8″ notch) the reinforcing angle enough to get a CR-3214 rivet in there. Then I riveted the whole mess together. I gotta tell you, my skills with the double-offset cupped rivet set are rusty as all get-out. There are two rivets I find…. questionable, but there are eight others in that area that are just fine, so I’m not going to mess with it and risk mangling the metal or enlarging the holes too much. So here they are, locked, cocked, and ready to rock. Although I have to check, those 3 on the longeron might be AN426 and not AN470, like I did them.
After that bit of business, I got all the parts for the rollbar (what Van’s calls the cabin frame) out of the hayloft and started laying them out. I went over the drawings, and this stuff is starting to get harder. At this point, it’s expected that you can measure and cut things to 1/64th-inch accuracy, something I still have some problems with since my finest Sharpie has a 1/32″ tip. Fortunately, no part is more than a Scotchbrite-wheel pass away from blueprint spec, assuming I leave enough metal for adjustment.
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