April 12, 2020 Priming day is a lot of work, today it was two batches due to the number of parts. First, a few hours with soapy water and Scotch-brite pads cleaning all the parts. We decided to skip the Alumiprep and Alodine and just mechanically strip everything down with Scotch-brite. It's an intense scrub... Continue Reading →

April 11, 2020 With the risky part of the trim tab completed successfully, the skeleton needed attention. A few match drilled holes, some countersinking and it's all ready to go. For such a little part, it took a surprising amount of time though. The countersink on the 607-PP trim tab rib definitely knife-edged the holes... Continue Reading →

April 10, 2020 Today was the start of the trim tab. It seems to be the most dreaded piece in the entire tail based on the horror stories on Van's Air Force. We ordered an extra trim tab skin with our last replacement order because we assumed we would mess up the trim tab like... Continue Reading →

April 3, 2020 More of the same today on the other side elevator. Put the skeleton together, added the skin and final drilled all the holes. It's starting to feel like a really routine process but there's a lot of consulting the plans in between each permanent step. Counterweight Ribs & Skin The left counterweight... Continue Reading →

April 2, 2020 Now that the stiffeners are behind us, the next step is building both elevator skeletons. The right elevator is pretty simple, the left elevator includes a cut out for the trim tab and mounting for the trim servo. Paul prepped the trim servo reinforcement plate for the left elevator, primed it and... Continue Reading →

March 31, 2020 The replacement rudder stiffener came in the mail today, so we cut that out, trimmed it up, took it to the wheel and primed it. It installed pretty easy with the back riveting set and that finished up the rudder skins until we prime everything for final assembly. The elevator skins were... Continue Reading →

March 30, 2020 Stiffeners...... all... day... long. Eight and a half hours of cutting, trimming, deburring, etc. of stiffeners. Nothing really new or exciting on the elevator stiffeners compared to the rudder except some trimming details, its just grunt work to get everything cut out and prepped. Cut out the basic shapes, mark the individual... Continue Reading →

March 28 & 29, 2020 So, it turns out that two stabilizers are only about half of the work in the total empennage. We've still got the rudder and elevators to assemble, so we got back to work. The first step is cutting out the stiffeners for the rudder. This took longer than expected, but... Continue Reading →

March 25 & 26, 2020 More bucking today. Well actually, only really bucking today. I guess that's not entirely true, but most of today was spent on the vertical stab. First was to countersink the spar reinforcement. Post CountersinkingSpot Priming It'd be great if the instructions had you do this before they told you to... Continue Reading →

March 23 & 24, 2020 Since the rear spar was completed yesterday, we finished the skeleton for the rest of the horizontal stab today and and then it was time to tackle the skin. The first rivets of the skin have to be bucked, which is the first time we'll have to buck anything for... Continue Reading →