Back on the HS Spar

Feels good to get back on the project today! Been in Taiwan for a very very nice vacation. I borrowed an alligator squeezer from a friend at SZP. This was invaluable in setting the rivets on the elevator hinge brackets, where the C-squeezer couldn’t fit. As with everything, the right tool makes hard work easy. Sure, I could have riveted with the gun and a bucking bar but the squeezers set the rivets so nicely and the gun on the universal heads, specially the AD4’s, seem to just smash the daylights out of everything.

I also trimmed the little cut outs in the middle of the rear spar for elevator clearance. Why I didn’t do this before I prepped and painted everything is beyond me. Note to self, everything has to get done at one point or another, so do something as soon as you can.

After waiting for the touch up paint to dry, next I’ll bolt up the center elevator bracket then start riveting the HS structure up.

HS Riveting Started

Today we started riveting up the Horizontal Stabilizer. We got through most of the rear spar. The pneumatic squeezer in our yoke (Big Bertha) was the way to go on most of these rivets. The rivets came out looking great. I couldn’t image hand squeezing or bucking all of these AD4 rivets. The rivets closest the the elevator hinges are a little tricky. We’ll have to buck these or borrow an alligator-type squeezer. We didn’t get as much done as we were planning but we had a nice day and rented a Cessna 172 to fly up to the coast to Santa Barbara and back.

The tape is to prevent accidentally riveting the holes that attach the ribs.

Rear Spar Riveting

Got home a little late from work but still managed to get a few hours worth of work done. Today I riveting up the vertical stabilizer rear spar. I used my pneumatic squeezer and yoke for all but 2 rivets that the bottom most rudder brackets interfere with the yoke itself. I’ll need to buy my back riveting plate so I can back rivet these. Alternatively I could use the flush set in the gun and a bucking bar. Choices Choices!

Also, above the flush rivets on the drawing where it calls out where the fuselage bolts up to, there’s a hole on the centerline in my parts that’s not on the drawing. I’m not sure if this is a third hole that will get a bolt later, or if it is supposed to be drilled out to run wires though or if it gets a 470 rivet. Will call Vans and find out tomorrow if I can’t find it on the forums.

Rear Spar

Today we had a late start as I was catching up with sleep after work travel. For once, Donna was up before me. We started by shaping and prepping the rear spar reinforcement pieces. This was by far the longest task of the day.

Then we cleco’d the rear spar all together and attached the HS-412PP elevator hinge brackets. After feeling like we made some progress we took a motorcycle ride down to Santa Monica for Pizza.

When we got back, we felt we had a little more work left in us and drilled the center elevator bracket that sandwiches a bearing. Getting the bearing aligned before drilling was a little tricky. I found it was easiest to cleco the brackets to the spar and use a punch to line the bearing up. Then I used 2 side clamping cleco’s to hold everything together tightly. I used a DOTCO 90 degree air drill to match drill all holes and added cleco’s as I went.