Horizontal Stabilator - 5

03-22-2013 thru 03-24-2013
At the end of the day, Sunday, I'm about 80 hours into the project. It was a prabout 3-hours of work in each day. Slowly the individual pieces are beginning to resemble an airplane. The stabilator really makes it feel like I'm making progress. The stabilator has an eight foot span, so it really begins to give one a sense of the scale of the airplane and the project as a whole.

Friday- ember of EAA Chapter 81 here in Tucson. I thought it was a good idea to have a technical councilor over to look at the stabilator before I 1put the skins on. It was time well spent. The councilor thought the workmanship was good and had some great ideas on how I might speed of some of the operations. Maybe a bandsaw and bench grinder with a polishing wheel are in my future.

I then proceeded with the final drill of all the holes, and a little clean-up.
Bottom surface cleco'd for final drill.

 Picture of the box-spar and assembly with the skins temprarily installed.

Saturday- I continued with the final drill and begant process. Must be close to 400 rivets installed- just guessing, I didn't count.

I decided to take some pictures of the stabilator skeleton prior to button-up- future reference I suppose. I guess the important area of assembly during this process is to ensure that the upper skin flange needs to be on the outside. Makes sense to keep the moisture out.

 Top-skin riveting complete!

Sunday- Today I finished riveting the main skins, installing the left/right splice, and installed the hinge brackets. 

One side complete

 Left and right hinge brackets for servo trim installed.

 Now I'm and little concerned about the aft skins HS-1217 left and right. Look at the tailing edge and the way it curves down. Anyone following this blog- what are your thoughts. Is this normal?

So, I'd say I'm 90-95% complete with the stabilator. Still need to install the counter-balnce arm and weights, and the actuator yokes. The stabilator has an 8-foot span-this is where I stop for the weekend! 

Friday April 5, 2013- Okay- new aft skins installed. Removed prior set and replaced with replacement items from Van's. Van's indicated that the prior set may have been bent incorrectly and offered to send replacements. Drilled out a total of 56 rivets on both sides. I used a magnet to retreve the rivet heads from inside the closed stabilator- all accounted for, no rattles. Installed the aft skins with cleo's and checked the fit. They look good- no droop. I also installed the upper and lower control arms. I'm done with the stabilator and 85 hours into the project. The only thing I didn't install was the counter balance arm and weights. Easier to store without. The tailcone is next- the wings are on order.

Horizontal Stabilator - 4

03/17/2013 I did not make nearly the progress I made last week-end. This weekend it was final prep prior to installing the skins. So the first order of business was to match drill the final three holes in each of the servo-trim tab hinges. I did this per the illustration in the Van's instructions. I used the right skin to celco and match drill the remaining holes. The hinges are temporarily celcoed to the lower inside aft edge of HS-1201.

After the match drill above, it was time to once again deburr, eadius the corners of the skin and then sand. I use 320 grit followed be 400 grit wet paper to smooth all the edges. It was then onto cleaning and scotch-briting the inside skin prior to applying primer. Step 1; clean with acetone, 2: scotch-brite, 3: alcohol clean and the prime. I only applied primer 2-inches beyond each rivet hole pattern versus the entire skin. Photos of inside prep and scotch-brite areas.

4-hours over the weekend is about it! 72 hours Total!!

Horizontal Stabilator - 3

Wow- made some great progress today. I was in the garage, aka RV-12 factory for about 7 hours today. Between Friday's 9- hours and today's 7, plus maybe an hour priming parts yesterday, it has a good weekend for the project.

When I started out this morning all I had was a bunch of parts. All drilled, sanded, deburred and primed. I ended up have to add a couple of countersinks for nutplates, the WD-1207 and WS-1208 upper and lower horns.

First task was to assemble the boxspar.[Pardon the fancy table covering. I wanted to minimize scratches during assembly. Thanks' Mrs. Gries]

An important part of the assembly is to ensure alignment inspar ribs, and the center spar caps. Had to look twice to make sure my eyes weren't tricking me.

Next was thedrilling of the counter balance arm. This involves temporarly turning the counterbalance brackets 90 degrees, and aligning the counterbalance arm for drilling. This is probably overkill but I used a level to get everything right.

 Next it was time to install 16 nutplates with the countersunk in the forward and aft spar assemblies. That's HS-1202 and HS1203. You've got to be careful with the rivet lengths. Eight nutplates with doublers and the rest without. Some are AN426AD3-4.5 and some are AN426AD3-3.5.

Next it was time to install the various forward and aft ribs. Some of the ribs install at the same time. Examples would be the L/R HS-1205 and HS-1207 and the HS-1204 and HS-1206.

Finally the inboard and outboard hinge bracket assemblies were installed and bolts torqued to 25 inch pounds. Pretty straight forward operation.

Oh buy the way. I only used two of the CR3243 4-4 oversized rivets in the box spar.

Total time on the project to date - 68 hours. May be time to order the wing kit!!