Hinges on VS main spar

Finished drilling all the holes and mounted the hinges on the main spar for the VS.

VS main spar

Started on the main spar on the VS. Fabricated the VS-408 (for the second time...)and pilot drilled the holes.

Rudder skin

Finished fabricating the stiffeners and drilled them to the rudder skin. Deburred everything so it is ready for dimpling. Polished the countersunk bucking bar/plate and made a wooden "floor" inside the Avery C-dimple tool (flush with the die).

The new parts are supposed to come tomorrow (today actually). This include all the damaged parts and the new skins for the HS.

Started with rudder

Sometimes I take one step fwd and two steps back. This time I did it twice... While waiting for new parts on the HS and VS, I continued with the rudder.

I made all the V-blocks for the rudder and elevator jigs, made the brake for the trailing edge bends and a countersink metal plate for the back riveting. Then I made all the stiffeners for the rudder and they are ready for being drilled to the skins.

Ordered a torque wrench, strap duplicators to drill the new skins and a few other things from Averytools, and reamers and drills from Aircraft Tool Supply.




It turns out that the HS-406 rib on the HS is a bit strange. The fwd part of the flange does not fit the skin, making it impossible to achieve the correct dimension at the tip of the HS (11 inch cord) while the skin at the same time fits properly on the HS-406. When my skins fitted properly, I measured a cord of 10.5 inches. I thought that it was obvious that the skin should fit the ribs and that the tip cord would become whatever it became. This was wrong, because the tip has to fit with the elevator and the balancing arm. According to Van's I should simply disregard the poor fitting of the fwd part of the flange by not putting any rivets there, because the strength of the structure is in the curvature of the skin, not the rib. I think this will look strange having unriveted flanges, so I ordered two new HS-406 ribs that I will modify so they fit, either by making the tip longer by 0.5 inch, or by widening the tip angle. I also ordered new skins, all the rivet holes were finished before I found out about the 11 inch glitch.

On the VS-408 I managed to cut the forking 9.5 inches instead of 8.5 inches. A new one will come with the skins for the HS.

So, the drawings are correct, even though the parts doesn't allways fit accordingly. It is therefor much better to modify the parts instead of "modifying" the drawings. Also, from now on I will allways wear glasses while building...