June 13, 2020
We had our first tech advisor inspection and overall it went well. He was happy with the general quality, but almost all of our 3/32 rivets are undersized according to our standard measurement gauge. Van’s says in Section 5.0 that they use smaller rivets than normal and that smaller shop heads are to be expected. Even with that, our tech advisor suggested they could all still use a bit more squeeze. The rivets in the tail that we can’t reach were driven with the gun and thus more set than the ones we squeezed, so I’m still happy with our progress.
Besides the rivets he suggested that we buy a vixen file and go over the edges of all the skins a little more. So, it’s looking like we’ll be fine – just a little detail work to go back and touch up.
Paul setup the air squeezer and let a buddy go to town on every edge rivet he could find. I picked up the a file we already had and tackled some edges. We’ll have to pull the tail down out of the rafters at some point to get those all fixed up before our next inspection.
While our buddy was squeezing all the rivets again and I was deburring edges, Paul went ahead and installed the GSA 28 autopilot servo in the right wing. It went in really easily with very little resistance at all – it’s always nice to work with things that are designed to fit. This is the first pricey Garmin box we’ve installed, and it’s another little milestone to celebrate.
Cheers,
-Kacy
(Total Build Time: 288.5 hrs)