Aug 4-5, 2020
Took the rudder cable fairings I got from spruce and shaped them down with the sanding disk. I decided that I wanted these to be removable so I made a backing plate for them with countersunk nut plates for #6 screws. I shaped them so the #8 screw that holds the adel clamp and plastic tube on the rudder cable also holds the backing plate in place. There’s a little flex in them while installing the #6 screws, but once the screws are in everything is plenty strong. It took a few tries to get things shaped correctly and the right clearances. The bottom holes of the rudder fairing come really close to a j-stringer on the inside of the skin, but everything worked out in the end.
I had to be creative with dimpling the skin for these because I didn’t have a good way to do it. I ended up putting a socket extension in the rivet gun to drive the male side of the die. I held the female side of the die against the skin and shot it a few times to get the right dimple. Where the female die wouldn’t fit (because it was close to the j stringer), I used a piece of steel that I counter-sunk as a female die replacement. Besides numb fingers, everything seemed to work fine.
Once the final install of the right side rudder cable fairing was done, I repeated the process on the left side. I used the right side pieces and clamped them to the left side pieces so when I ran the sanding disks around them they came out identical.
I PASSED 500 HOURS!
-Paul
(Total Build Time: 501.1)