Dec 20, 2000

Empennage kit is ordered and hopefully will be here in the new year. In the meantime I'm taking care of any preparation, like gathering any tools I may be short of and supplies like alodine etc.

Dec 29,2000

Kit has arrived - yipeeee. Not sure I'll get to it this weekend. Hard to believe I know, but it is Hogmanay after all.

Jan 3, 2001

Inventory complete. Everything appears to be there. Spent some time reviewing the plans and organizing things like rivets and hardware into organization trays.

Jan 6,2001

I decided to take the approach of preparing all the materials at once before riveting the assemblies together. That way I can opearate in a king of production line mode, executing the same process on all the parts at once. So here goes, time to drill, debur, dimple, flute, countersink....... Atter several hours work I have a pile of drilled and deburred ribs and spars. This is going to take a while.

Jan 28, 2001

Still drilling and deburring, but all the ribs and spars for the horizintal stabilizer, Vertical stablizer and elevators are ready for dimpling. At this point, all VS and HS spars, ribs, hinges etc have been cleco'd together and the actually look like something off a plane :-).

On the hinge brackets I'd noticed that the bolt holes had to be drilled out to allow the bolts to go through. Seems like the powder coating reduced the size of the bolt hole.

Feb 24, 2001

OK, all prep work is mostly complete including all the skins. I've riveted most of the HS skeleton together and started riveting the VS skeleton. I've chosen not to go with widespread priming. The climate in Colorado is such that the alclad aluminum should do very well. In area's where the alclad has been scratched, non alclad material has been used, or in areas of greater risk, I'm using Zinc Chromate primer. On completion of the aircraft, I'll use "Corrosion X" every couple of years to continue corrosion inhibition. If it's good for the Navy in salt air, it works for me in Dry Colorado.

March 04, 2001

Vertical Stab is complete and I have my first major assembly :-). It's amazing how strong a few fairly flimzy peices of metal become once you revet them together.

March 10, 2001

Horizintal Stab. is complete. I'm on a roll. Trim tab servo assembled and also satrted on assembly of the left elevator. With the forward spar oriented the way it is, it's pretty difficult to use bucked rivets, and almost impossible to buck the second side rivets. I chose to use structural blind rivets for the elevator skin to forward spar attachment where bucked rivets had been called out in the plans. The blind rivets used are stronger than regular bucked rivets, though they are a lot more expensive.

March 31, 2001

Left elevator mostly ready for final assembly. Wings kit should be here soon so I wonder if I'll start in the wings before I finish the empennage. No need to wonder, I'm bound to do that.

April 14, 2001

Yep, I'm working the rest of the emp. and the wings in parallel. Did do more in the left elevator though. Just need to do the trim tab and trim tab attach now. Going to leave that until the same time as my left fuel tank so I'll have some proseal available.