Recap

We got a little side-tracked from the blog in the past year with building, so a lot’s happened since the last substantive post. While by no means exhaustive, this will recap the activity of the past year or so by plans section, taking us from September 2015 up through August 2016. Much of the work has been to plans, so it will only highlight notable modifications, or where things didn’t go quite “to plan.” So to speak.

6. Vertical Stabilizer

Our build officially commenced on September 26 with the vertical stabilizer. In an auspicious start, the very first parts we worked on had to be scraped since the holes on the spar doublers were oversized after drilling. We attribute it to using a drill guide that tended to cause the drill to walk on the undrilled doubler, and also to a bad drill bit. We replaced the bit and removed the drill guide from our process and haven’t had that issue since.

We also extended a hole while dimpling the skin with our DRDT-2. After consulting with Van’s, the hole was abandoned, the dimple was flattened, the cracks were drilled out, and a second hole was drilled to install a rivet to take the load.

It takes some effort to keep motivated after screwing up a part. It helps me to take a breather, walk away from the build for that day, and then come back fresh later after thinking about the issue and how to solve it.

The V-stab also includes a couple modifications. The first one allows mounting of a wire bundle in the top of the stabilizer, as well as a NAV antenna. The design of that will be covered in a future post.

Additionally, we are adding a grounding strap between the rudder and V-stab. Our method includes drilling a new hole in the V-stab spar web and installing a nutplate for a bolt that will secure the ground strap. Again, details on our grounding modifications will be in a future post.

Everything on this section has been completed except for final riveting.

7. Rudder

The rudder was going great right until riveting. Then we buckled the main rudder spar trying to insert a rivet. This meant getting a new spar and doubler plates, drilling them out again, dimpling, alodining and priming. Fortunately, since it was our second go, we were able to complete the rework in only a few build sessions.

We also added a few modifications to the rudder.

First, static wicks. We are adding static wicks to trailing edges of the airplane including the rudder, elevators, and ailerons. While flying through the air, and in particular precipitation, the airplane can pick up a charge, similar to rubbing your socks over a carpet. This charge needs to be returned to the air, and static wicks are very effective at doing this. Without static wicks, the airframe needs to be charged to a higher amount in order to discharge to the air. When it does equalize, it creates larger electrical arcs that are more disruptive to radios and electrical equipment. While we could probably not install them at all and be okay for the life of the airplane, we’re choosing to install them because we are building the airplane as an IFR platform, and our likelihood of encountering static is higher.

The next modification is the grounding strap. We had to notch the leading edge skin above the center hinge point to make room for our grounding strap. We also added a nutplate to attach the strap to the rudder spar web.

Finally, we added an attachment on the bottom rib to install a wiring anchor for the tail light we may or may not install.

For the trailing edge we followed the Tim Olsen process and it worked great. We alternated which side the factory and shop heads were located, and it looks wonderful — very happy with how it turned out.

After some more riveting of the leading edge, this section of the plans is complete!

8. Horizontal Stabilizer

Overall, the H-stab went very smoothly, with only a couple issues.

First, we did over-countersink the most outboard hole on one of the spar flanges. The flange countersinks in general I found to be a little tricky because the flange width is smaller than the microstop guide diameter, so the drill can tilt easier. The outboard hole was worse since the countersink microstop only makes contact with a small portion of the flange. After consulting Van’s, we are going to install the next size larger rivet (AD4 instead of AD3). And as they always say, no one will be able to tell.

One note about Van’s support. They are very good at helping us with repairs, but I do find it funny how much of their response is encouragement. I can understand why, since it is difficult to mentally recover from a screw-up. We’ve contacted them a few times, and every time it follows the format of [do this] [only you will know it’s there] [it’ll still be great when it’s done] [keep building!].

The only modification is to install a wire bundle from the root to the tip so we can install a camera or a logo light. A logo light is typically seen on airliners to illuminate the tail of the airplane since that is where an airline’s brand or logo will be painted most prominently. We’re installing one because we’re giant nerds.

After a lot of humming and hawing, we alodined all of the parts. This involved making a large tank for the spar, which is one of the (if not, the) longest continuous parts in the aircraft. We’ll cover our corrosion protection methods and techniques in a future post.

As of now, we have most of the ribs primed, and the remaining parts alodined except for the skins.

9. Elevators

Continuing the trend of the H-stab, the elevators were completed with no rework except for re-dimpling with the sprinkback dimple die over ones performed using a non-springback dimple die. It’s like we’re getting the hang of this whole metal airplane assembling thing.

Again, we’re installing a grounding strap and static wicks in a similar fashion as the rudder. The only difference with the elevator is that we needed to add them to the skin and there wasn’t a rib to tie into, so we fashioned a doubler plate instead.

Most of the parts are alodined, none are primed.