After I thought I had the hinge arrangement figured out, I went on to priming everything.  Like I have done several times before, no new developments when priming these components.

The pictures below, kind of jump forward to the completed trim tab.  I did not need to use any blind rivets on the trim tab except to rivet the trim tab bends on the side.  Three rivets on the right side and two on the left.  In the picture below, the trim tab doesn't look to bad.

Little blurry here, but as far as I can tell, the trailing edge of the left elevator and trim tab are very straight.  I don't have any concerns with that...

The picture below shows one of my concerns (probably more of a cosmetic issue than a flight issue).  There is about 1/16" to 1/8" difference in the trailing edges of the trim tab and the left elevator skin.  If  you look at the hinge arrangement I was discussing above, it appears that there would have been enough room to move the trim tab forward enough to take out that difference without the trim tab hinge eyes rubbing against the trim tab spar or elevator skin.  This was challenging to see when putting the dang thing together with cleco's.  Now that I have got it together, I know how I would like to adjust it.  FIGURES!!!

Here is another angle of the trim tab to elevator edge.  If you look at my trim tab and elevator tab bending log entries, it will show how I was unable to get a really nice and straight bend on the left elevator tabs.  After mounting the trim tab, I have Van's minimum clearance and this don't look to bad from the top.

The bottom looks like crap.  My only saving grace here is that it is on the bottom and not easy to see by the casual observer.

On the picture below, I guess what I am trying to show you is that the lower trim tab skin will rub (or bind) against the trim tab spar when the trim tab is lowered.  I see other builders have just put a slight bend in the lower trim tab skin in order to prevent those two surfaces from rubbing.  Next time I take the trim tab off, I will use the hand seamer and put a slight bend in it.

Alright, so far my efforts today have gotten me luke warm results.  When I put the trim tab together with the electric servo, I started getting PO'd (next two pictures show you why).  Here you see the trim servo mounted to the bottom of the elevator with the connecting rod to the trim tab.  Now this is not adjusted which only means the situation is worse than it is in the picture.  Currently the servo is fully extended and the connecting rod drags on the elevator skin.  I am going to need to remove yet more material so the connecting rod can clear.  I had already removed what I considered to be a lot of material here.

When I attempted to mount the trim servo to its bracket, the bracket was so short (aft side) it couldn't be fully tightened down as the trim servo rubs on two rivets that secure the servo bracket to the plate. I re-squeezed those two rivets to see if I could gain any additional clearance.  It helped, but I could not gain enough clearance.  Looking around the net, other builders have shimmed the trim servo with washers between the trim servo and the bracket.  This will also compound my connecting rod clearance illustrated above.  One builder commented that Van's had told them that this is a common occurrence.  If it is that common, why don't they fix their brackets?  I can't believe that it would be that hard for them to fix the fabrication of the bracket.

I am considering re-doing the left elevator all together.  I am somewhat disappointed with my results on the trim tab area of the left elevator.  Before, I get that extreme, I think I will take some time to look at other RV's to see what they have done in this area.  I definitely could do this better in a fraction of the time the next time around.

I am off to Dallas today for a week of training on protective relaying.  Between that and my remaining college work, it will probably be a couple of weeks before I find the time to get back to doing anything on the plane.

The extra hole came from when I folded the hinge over to drill the holes in the hinges such that they lined up between the elevator and trim tab sides.  This worked with the exception of the hole to the inside (or right side) of the elevator hinge.  The edge of the elevator is angled therefore the rivet line is not straight forward to aft, but angled to line up with the edge of the elevator.

Now I have to wait for a new hinge.

If you look closely at the picture below, you can see where the trim tab is not straight from top to bottom especially at the top of the photograph (top is forward on elevator).

Just a different angle.  Like I say, I believe this to be cosmetic only.

Part of my mediocre results was due to the fact that the wood blocks moved approximately 1/8" which was 4x more movement than I expected from Van's instructions.  Additionally, with the two individual blocks, they would tend to buckle when they were hit with the rivet hammer.

In the picture below, I am using to Quik-Grip clamps with 1" x 3" blocks.  Don't do this!!!  Read on and I will tell you why.

Just another picture showing all the Quik-Grip clamps I am using.  If you look closely, you will also see some vise grip clamps in there too.  I used all of these Quik-Grip clamps because the elevator would move when hit with the rivet hammer.  Again, don't do this....  Read on...

The picture below is of the trim tab.  These bends look great.  I changed my method here and it worked ALOT BETTER. 

Notice that on the trim tab, I am using a 2" x 4" which is one piece of wood and a SINGLE C-Clamp.  This resulted in excellent bends.

Okay, here is what I learned from this evolution:

• Start bending with the trim tab.  It is a smaller piece and if you screw it up, it is cheaper to replace.  It will take at least one bend to see how all this is going to work.
• DO NOT, and I repeat, DO NOT use Quik-Clamps to clamp the elevator and wood blocks.  You physically cannot get enough clamping force to hold the piece when hitting it with the rivet hammer.  If you don't already have some, go and get some C-Clamps.  Use at least two to hold the wood blocks.  I got by with 1 C-Clamp from the picture above, but I was lucky.  Besides, all I had was one C-Clamp.
• DO use double sided sticky tape.  When clamped, that really helps hold the blocks to the aluminum.  You will see what I mean when you go to remove the wood block from the trim tab after it has been clamped.
• DO NOT use any block of wood smaller (narrower) than a 2"x4".  The wider the block is, the better.  When you hit the tabs with the rivet hammer, it wants to buckle the blocks.  If you have a wider block in the trim tab or elevator, the less this tendency will be.
• DO use one block of wood if possible.  If you look at the trim tab photo above, I am using one block of a 2" x 4".  I mathematically guesstimated the angle of the trim tab and ran a band saw blade through the block at that angle.  The band saw blade removed just enough wood that the trim tab skin could be inserted in that slit.  I then used the C-Clamp to clamp down on it.  I put double sided tape on the outside of the 2" x 4" (bottom side and inside of the trim tab, obviously, double sided tape could not be put into the "slit" created by the band saw).  This arrangement did not even budge when struck with the rivet hammer.  Additionally, with the block not cut into two pieces, it eliminated the tendency of the blocks to "buckle" when hit with the rivet hammer.

I soaked the fluid needle in Acetone and later MEK with NO JOY in removing the cured epoxy primer on the fluid needle.  I ended up having to take some 220 grit wet/dry sandpaper and carefully remove the primer from the fluid needle.  In the picture below, you can see where the sand paper roughed up the fluid needle where the epoxy primer had built up.

I re-assembled the sprayer and Viola, the dang thing worked like a charm.

This cost me about 3 hours of back tracking effort to get to a point of priming again.  Because all the primer ran out of the front of the gun, I ended up being short on primer and had to mix a second batch...  I see why other builders use "rattle can" primers.  This two part epoxy primer is time consuming to apply.
LESSON LEARNED:  Remove and clean the fluid needle after each priming session!!!!

The one thing that did go right today was that this was the first time I used the box fan I mounted to the side of my paint booth.  I was really happy how this worked.  Even with the fan on medium or slow, it still pulled a large amount of the over spray through the filters.  I had noticeably less over spray in the garage.  Look at the picture of the filter....  IT WORKED!!!!

Just another picture showing how much material I removed from the dimple die.  I am still able to use the dimple die in "regular" dimpling applications as the performance of the dimple die was unaffected by removing that edge.

I was able to get all these rivets with the pneumatic rivet squeezer and a 2.5" flange nose yoke.  Everything looks good so far...

Looks good from the inside too.

I also riveted the brackets for the electric trim servo to the trim cover plate.  If you look closely to the print (DWG 4, Electric Trim Assembly), it gives you the dimensions on where to mount these brackets from the edge of the cover plate.  Ensure you dry fit everything first to make sure that the trim cover plate will sit flush against the reinforcement plate.  Additionally, if you look closely to the right servo bracket, it overhung the trim cover plate cutout.  I used a rotary burr bit in the Dremel to radius the bracket to perfectly match the curvature of the trim cover plate.

Everything looks straight with my calibrated eye...

After I completed riveting the trim servo plates, I bent the elevator skin over in the make-shift brake.

Installed the elevator skeleton and final drilled all remaining holes.

Then it was back to deburring, dimpling, blahh-blahh-blahh.  Same old repetitive stuff.

I decided not to prep and prime parts today.  By the time I got this far, it was borderline to late to a priming project.

Well, the reason that this got bent over is that I used the flush rivet set in the rivet hammer instead of the back rivet set.  I should have picked up my first clue I was doing something wrong when I had to drill out one rivet on the bottom side that set "high" and was not flush with the skin.

This rivet set below is what I should have used.  Below, you see a spring loaded sleeve on the end of the rivet set.  This spring and sleeve arrangement holds to the two pieces of aluminum together tightly while the rivet hammer recoils.  Without the two pieces being riveted held tightly together, it can result in a rivet that sets high -OR- in my case, a bent stiffener.

This is what happens when your mind is not on the task at hand!!

I was fortunate to have some blank stiffener stock (from a Van's training kit) and fabricated a new stiffener.  In the training kit, no holes or cutouts are marked.  I used the damaged stiffener to transfer all dimensions to the "blank" stiffener material.

The fabrication of the new stiffener took me less than 1/2 hour.  However, since I prime most internal surfaces with AZKO 2-part epoxy primer, it took me another 3 hours to get the new stiffener (and a couple of additional parts) primed.  DANG!!!

The new stiffener turned out GREAT, but it just made for a frustrating night.

The new stiffener looked so good, you can't tell it from the partially fabricated stiffeners that come with the kit.

After completing the right elevator, it was on to the left elevator.  This is the elevator that Van's warns you about stating that this is where most of the mistakes are made.  I can tell you that this was true for me.  Take everything I learned to this point, flush it, and start over.  Not really, but it sure felt like it.

First thing I attempted to figure out is the mounting configuration of the trim servo.  Van's has a note stating that you may remove as much of the interference as you need from the reinforcement plate.  Aaahaa, I might need to do something here.  I need to run the trim servo all the way out to see how or if it interferes with the trim servo cutouts.  So I dug out the Goldwing battery and started connecting wires with some jumpers with alligator clips I bought from Radio Shack.  The trim servo runs like a champ.  One thing that I found that I don't like about this setup is that it uses 26 AWG wires.  Those are extremely small and difficult to properly splice.  It states that you can crimp or solder and run heat shrink tubing over the splice.  I don't know if you can get butt splices for wire that small and I have never had very good luck when I just solder a splice.  I guess I will figure that out when the time comes.

I was surfing and found this solution to connecting the small trim servo wires.  I like it a lot better than just sliding heat shrink over a soldered splice.  It looks to be a very durable installation.

http://www.aeroelectric.com/articles/macservo/macservo.html

If you also go to http://www.aeroelectric.com, Bob Nukolls has a ton of information on aircraft wiring and techniques to do it.

This is the connection drawing figures in the literature that comes with the trim servo.

I feel like I am playing with one of those electrical science project kits you used to be able to buy from Radio Shack.

Below, is the LED display for trim tab position.  It doesn't look very bright in the picture, but it was plenty bright when sitting on the table in a well lit garage.

After I got this far, I decided that this was all the work I was going to get done on Christmas day.

I spent the day by myself since Tami was up at her folks for the holidays.  Because I stayed up until 2 am priming the elevator skins, I didn't wake up until NOON!!!  I couldn't believe it, the day is half over already.

Today was fairly productive since I was able to complete the right elevator with the exception of rolling the forward edge.

Riveting the right elevator was an uneventful evolution... That means I won't have to buy replacement parts from Van's on this component.

At the trailing edge of the stiffeners and skins, I put a high temp RTV (safe for aluminum) at the tips.  Van's states to do this to prevent the stiffeners from rubbing and making contact with the opposite side skin/stiffener during vibrations experienced during flight which could result in skin damage, cracking, etc.

When I folded the skin over, the stiffeners did not even come close to touching, but I put in the RTV as an added measure of protection.

The elevator counterweight mounting screws were torqued to 25 in-Ibs.

The right elevator turned out really nice.  The two rivet holes that were slightly deformed during the dimpling process on the trailing edge are hardly noticeable.  Now all I have to do is roll the forward edge and rivet.

• I only had a couple of parts to primer, however, this evolution took all night.  This sure goes smoother when Tami helps out.
• The whole evolution went pretty well, however, I had to mix up primer twice as I ran out of primer...
• It was getting really late and I was getting in a hurry...  The priming on the last part didn't look nearly as nice as some of the other stuff I have done.  I attribute it to one of two reasons, to much curing solution for the amount of primer I had, or not waiting long enough for the induction time (which is 30 minutes).

• De-burred and dimpled right elevator skeleton.
• Debur and dimple right elevator skin.
• Moved left elevator stiffeners with left elevator parts.
• Late start due to working overtime tonight.

After completing the brake, I set the skin in the brake and bent it over.  It took several tries with the skin progressively farther from the hinges in order to get a nice bend.  I am still not thrilled with the bend, but I tried everything I could think of to make that bend as sharp as possible.  I now see why Van's made the new rudder the way they did (a lot sharper and crisper trailing edge).

Once I got the bend done on the skins, I inserted the elevator skeleton, cleco's and final drilled all remaining holes.

1. Set every 10th rivet by back riveting just enough to hold the rivet in the hole and checking for any developing deformities in the trailing edge.
2. Go back and set every 5th rivet, using the same method called out in step 1.
3. Set all remaining rivets, using the same method called out in step 1.
4. Flip the rudder over (carefully) and further set rivets (factory head side) to approximately 70-75%.  This allowed all the factory side heads to be fully set in the skin dimple.
5. Flip the rudder over again (carefully) and fully set all rivets by back riveting.  It took a fair amount of "hammering" to get the shop head fully set to where I was happy with it.

Just a close-up of the same picture above.  The right side in this picture looks like it needs to be shimmed up prior to riveting.

After I completed the second pass, the rivets were beginning to look pretty good.  I again, took another pass down the trailing edge on the shop head side of the rivet.  It only took a couple of rivet hammer strikes (Sioux 2x at 45 psi) to fully countersink the shop heads.  One reference describes that the shop heads would look like a "acorn sitting in a dimple".  After this final pass, the shop heads sat very flush and almost filled the dimple on that side (almost, but not quite).

Van's instructions state that the trailing edge should not vary more than 0.100" from a straight line.  Visually, I could see only a very slight waviness on the trailing edge.  I put the straight edge (aluminum c-channel) and measured the gap (I used the light to demonstrate the waviness for the picture).  The measured maximum deviation from a straight line was measured to be approx. 0.050".

I CAN LIVE WITH THAT!!!

Very happy with how the trailing edge turned out.  Not a "Grand Champion", however, I don't want to spend the next 10 years building this thing to take out the 0.050" deviation.

Looking on the internet, I came across another builder's tip that looks like it would work really well.  Instead of back riveting the rudder's trailing edge, he modified a die set to squeeze the rivets.  He claims excellent results.  I have attached a link to that information.

http://www.matronics.com/photoshare/jimnbev@olypen.com.07.29.2003/

All that is left for this is to potentially notch the rear spar to make room for the elevator horn travel and mount the HS-411PP hinge bracket.  Ooh yeah, the fiberglass tips...  I am not going to worry about those until later.

In actuality, this turned out not to be that big of a deal.  If you look further into the instructions, Van's addresses removal of the rear spar flange material.  Additionally, I found builders that didn't remove this until fitting all of the pieces together at the end of the kit.  I did notice one builder who removed this material prior to rear spar assembly and he removed an excessive amount of the rear spar flange assembly.  Would that create a problem?  I don't want to remove any more material than is necessary.  So I got a little nervous, but it appears I am fine and not removing this spar flange is no big deal.

Since the rear spar was already primed and riveted together, the best thing I could think of is to wait and see how much needs to be trimmed and get out the Dremel Tool.  Drill the corners to get them rounded and use the Dremel cutting wheel to cut the straight lines.  Of course, it will still need deburring and touch-up primer work.  CRAP!!  Pay attention to the drawings!!!!

This evolution didn't go to badly.  When Van's instructions state that you may need to bend the HS-404 nose rib and the HS-405 main rib in order to set the rivets, they were kidding.  There was no way to set those rivets without gently bending those parts.  I used a vise grip clamp to ensure that the flanges stayed flat against the spar channel.  After I set the rivets, I gently bent back into place.  (I did see one builder who used an offset mushroom set with his rivet hammer and a bucking bar to set these rivets.  I bet that would have worked well, but for some reason, I didn't think of it at the time).

To continue with the assembly, Van's has you rivet the HS-707 nose rib to the skin, then install and cleco the front spar to the skin.  Blind rivets were used to connect the HS-708 main rib, HS-702 front spar, and the HS-707 nose rib.  I am hoping that no mistakes are made on the right side as Van's did not give me a single spare blind rivet.

Decided to stop for the night after getting the left skin done as we would not have enough time to complete the right side before my wife turns into a pumpkin (around 10-11pm).  That gives me a chance to get my construction log caught up...

I ended up using in the neighborhood of 24 oz of primer to do all of the horizontal stabilizer parts (I had to mix up 3 different batches.  Didn't want to make up more than I needed).

This was my best looking priming job yet.  I still have a few runs and where the primer came into contact with my wire hooks and or the chicken wire is wet with primer, it will tend to pull the primer off of the freshly painted parts.  Let the pats dry before trying to turn them over.  Putting the parts on the wood blocks helped a little.  At least it gave me more room in the paint booth for parts being worked on.

My paint gun settings were really good for coverage, but I had more over spray than I have had on previous priming efforts.  I would have to spend about 2 hrs cleaning up the garage the next morning.

I dispensed a small amount of tank sealant onto a large popcicle stick and smoothed out on the edge of both skins, and the AEX wedge.  This stuff sticks to everything.  I was fairly reserve when applying this, but attempted to get a nice even coverage on the edge of the rudder.  I didn't want any bulges on the trailing edge.  When I was happy with my coverage, I cleco'd the skins to the AEX wedge and 'C' channel.

I was pretty happy with how true the trailing edge looked when I was done.  Then came the long wait to let the tank sealant cure.  I let it sit for 4 days before riveting.

NOT SHOWN:  I used a high-temp (RED) RTV I got from a local auto parts store for applying to the trailing edge where the stiffeners are close together.  My understanding of this is that it creates a pliable adhesive between the two stiffeners.  This will dampen vibration and prevent stiffeners from rubbing on the opposite skin.  The rudder is really narrow at this point, I hope the RTV works as intended.

This is a picture of the rudder horn (R-405PD) and the horn brace (R-710).   You can see that those four bottom attaching rivets were blind rivets.  After doing this, I did see where some builders stated the were able to squeeze these rivets with a longeron yoke.  I tried, but I couldn't get the outer two rivets so I decided to keep them all the same.  Van's rudder print allows for the optional use of blind rivets in this location.

Just another picture of the lowest reinforcement plate for the rudder spar.  Notice that this particular reinforcement plate is on the forward side of the spar.  On the plate nut installation in the picture above, the reinforcement plate was on the aft side of the rudder spar.  Read the instructions carefully....  In this case, I think that it will be obvious if this reinforcement plate is on the wrong side as the pieces/parts won't fit together real well.

This is a picture of the rudder counterbalance skin.  The lower row of flush rivets required bucking.  Pay particular attention here as rivet order can make your life difficult if done incorrectly.  The two philips screws attach the rudder counterbalance lead weight to the counter-balance rib (R-912).  When I "dry fitted" the weight onto the counter-balance rib, it fit perfectly.  However, after you rivet the counter-balance skin to the counter-balance rib, the rivets will stick out slightly.  The lead counter-weight will not fit correctly without removing some material from the sides.  You won't have to remove very much and then it will (should) lay in there flat.  Don't forget to torque the nuts that secure the lead counter-weight before riveting the tip rib into place.

One other item I probably didn't do well enough was that the edges of the counter-balance skin (right side of this picture) need to be tapered back so that when the rudder skin is riveted to the skeleton does not have any bulging transitions as it overlaps the counter-balance skin.

When I started priming this time, I set up the spray gun by spraying on cardboard first (duh) and then attempted to prime the parts.  The primed parts looked really good tonight.  It is the simple things when it comes to using the spray gun that I need to learn to make it look good.

I will get this priming thing done perfectly on the next plane.

The rest of the day was just drilling, deburring, and dimpling stiffeners and elevator skins.  I did have a little trouble getting the aft most hole dimpled.  I tried the C-Frame with just me holding it since Tami is at her folks.  I was not able to hold it square on the C-Frame and it distorted the skin.  I figured it out after the 2nd hole, but they are on the top side (DANG).  I then used the close quarter dimple dies and they turned out to work pretty good on the elevator skins.  I went down stairs and got some nails (4D, a.k.a. 4 penny) from out stock in the basement.  I was snapping the shafts supplied with the dimple dies after about 2-3 holes.  the nails worked good and when they snapped, I had a whole box of spares.

I was out in the garage over 12 hours, but only seemed to get in about 9 hours of productive work in.  Gotta make my own meals now that Tami is gone for the week.

22 stiffeners, snipped, sawed, and de-burred tonight.  A lot of tonight's time was spend on the band saw and the bench grinder.

The parts I did see of this movie were pretty funny, however, I slept through about half of it with the hours I have been keeping the last couple of days.

After I got my short catnap, I was ready to work on the rudder.  I disassembled the rudder skeleton and de-burred all he holes.  I began dimpling all the spars and ribs.  All I have left to dimple is the rudder skins.

Short night...

Tami was able to roughly sand the angle into the scrap piece of 1" x 3" wood.  When Tami got it roughed in, I took a wood chisel and "fine" chiseled the angle I needed in the 1" x 3" by taking out a sliver or wood, setting the rudder trailing edge in the angle and doing it all over again and again until I got this thing to lay flat in the scrap wood.

As you can see, the rudder trailing edge (R-916) lays flush in the "wood jig".  I then clamped it to the drill press and drilled a #40 pilot hole into the wood jig so that the countersink alignment pin cutter had a place to go.

Once I got the countersink properly adjusted to allow the rivets to sit roughly flush, the simple little jig made some really nice countersink holes in the rudder trailing edge.  Care had to be taken not to over countersink these holes as the piece is not really all that thick and it is countersunk on both sides so that the rudder's trailing edge will be very thin.  Over countersinking would result in enlarging the hole as it would cut completely through the trailing edge piece.

I used the pneumatic squeezer to set these ***4- rivets.  I initially set the air pressure for the squeezer at around 90 psi.  However, these 4- rivets set fairly hard.  I ended up bumping the pressure to 100 psi and I now usually run squeezer pressure between 100-110 psi for any rivets I am setting.  The pneumatic squeezer, however, did a very nice job of providing consistent shop heads.  If you are SLO-BUILDING, don't do it without buying a pneumatic squeezer.

This was the first time that Tami and I attempted to buck rivets.  Tami bucked while I ran the rivet gun.  I gave her a short lesson on the finer points of riveting.  We tried one just so she could see how it worked.  It turned out really nice, so we kept going on the rest of the skin.

We followed Van's instructions for riveting the skin to the spars and ribs.  Worked pretty well.  A jig would have been nice just for holding the stabilizer so that we could rivet.  We had two rivets that were high as a result of improperly holding/bracing the stabilizer during riveting.  I drilled those out and put a new rivet in with no discrepancies.

Now that we have the stabilizer put together, I wonder if we should have primed the skin as well.  I have searched a number of web sites of fellow builders and there are very few who are priming the skins too.

1. Round off the upper edge of the flange for the rudder horn (R-405PD) in order to get the holes to line up perfectly for match drilling.
2. Make the R-917 shine to fit between the rudder horn and the front spar (R-902).
3. Trim away excess material from the horn brace (R-710).
4. Match drill the counterbalance skin (R-913) to the tip rib (R-903) and the counterbalance rib (R-912).

It is 11:30 pm and we are leaving for my sisters house for Thanksgiving dinner in the morning.  I guess the plane will have to be on hold for a day while I socialize with the family.

In my opinion, back riveting produces the nice flush rivets of any method I have tried to far.  As you can see below, they sit really nice and flush with no deformation of the skin around the rivet that is seen with bucking and squeezing rivets.  I just wish all methods produced results this good.

Below, you can see the inside rudder skin for the left side.  The stiffeners are primed and I have left as much of the vinyl on as I can to prevent scratching the Al-Clad skin while working with it.

There were no surprises and this went smooth with NO CLOSE calls for wrecking more parts.  So far, so good.

Today, I spent the day prepping the vertical stabilizer spars, ribs, and rudder stiffeners.  I am not going to go into great detail here on my priming technique.

Long story short, clean and etch parts with Alumiprep, dip in Alodine, and prime...

The first couple of times I pressed the trigger on the paint gun, primer just trickled out (of course that was all over the parts to be primed).  I finally got the gun to work fairly well (at least it would atomize the primer and spit it out).  I set the pressure at the gun (or more accurately at the regulator on the bench) to around 35 Ibs.  I had to play with the two adjustment knobs on the gun for the fluid needle and the spray pattern.  The only way to set this us is to just spray on some scrap cardboard or wood until you get a nice pattern.

My first couple of parts look really poor...  They are well covered (and that includes primer runs).  Good thing these will be enclosed inside the stabilizer and rudder.  When I got done, I had some extra primer left and practiced with the paint gun (now in hindsight, it would only seem logical that I would have practiced 1st and then primed parts).  I primed two ribs from the horizontal stabilizer that I screwed up.  They turned out the nicest of all the parts I primed today.  It figures that they were the last parts I did.

Van's just sends you 8 angled aluminum stiffeners which are pre-punched on one side.  These are then cut to make 16 rudder stiffeners.  Van's has taken alot of the guess work out of it by pre-punching the angle cuts that must be made to the stiffener.  More or less, cut from one hole to the next to get your taper cut.

It took me the better part of the day to cut stiffeners to length with the band saw and then clean up the edges and round the corners with a scotchbrite wheel.

The next task was to de-burr all the holes.  Tami came out and helped me take off the vinyl covering on the rudder skins with the soldering gun.  She also is very "project supporting" when I need holes deburred.

Finally, I dimpled the rudder skins with the c-frame.  I purchased a new hammer to use with the c-frame.  It is a 12 oz soft faced hammer.  It has a really nice feel when striking the c-frame giving a definitely noticeable different feel and sound when the dimple has been formed.

AN IDEA FOR THE NEXT TIME I TRY TO DO THIS:

• Get the two center holes drilled where the nose rib, front spar, and the main rib join together.  Then remove the skin on that side's skin and drill the remaining two holes with the skins removed.  Drill from the front spar reinforcement through the main rib.  Doing it the other way (aft to forward) has resulted in the drill bit wandering and left me with a poorly drilled hole.  Drill first with a #40 that way if the drill bit wanders, as long as it isn't to bad, it will clean itself up when you final drill to a size #30.  If you can't line up perpendicular to the spar reinforcement, consider use of the long drill bits to get as close to the 90 degree as possible.  My drill chuck would have rubbed on the nose rib (which can be removed if you take the time to remove your skin) with the shorter drill bits.  The right angle drill didn't help here either as the drill head also got in the way of the nose rib.

Van's give you an option to cut out a series of lightening holes on the spar doubler.  I did not do this.  Main reason being that I did not have the cutting tool(s) to do this properly.  I checked the Yahoo RV-7/7A group and those builders who cut those out saved a little over 3 oz on the weight of the doubler.  In retrospect, I wish that I took the time to cut those out, however, it won't make any difference in the final product with the exception of the weight savings.

Pictured below is the dimpling of the vertical stabilizer skin.  I dimpled as much as possible with the pneumatic squeezer (SWEET!!! Love that Squeezer) and dimpled the remaining holes using the C-frame.  This was Tami and I's first attempt at using the C-frame.  I was pretty happy with the results.  Need a proper hammer to strike the C-Frame (A 16-oz claw hammer is not the right tool, I ended up purchasing a 12-oz soft face hammer- MUCH BETTER).  Also, if you drag the skin across the male dimple die (even very lightly), it will leave a scratch on the Al-Clad material.  A little time and attention on the 2nd side we dimpled resulted in fewer scratches around the hole.

The picture above is an example of two things.  One, I look for this "halo" mark around the dimple to ensure that I have a properly set dimple (if you see the "halo" and just inside the halo, the aluminum skin is a different shade, usually shinier when held up at various angles against the lighting, it means that you are hitting the skin to hard with the dimple die and are "crushing" the aluminum skin).  If I don't see the "halo" I re-dimple until I do.  It has been a pretty good GO-NO GO criteria.  The other example this picture shows is that if you are not really careful moving the skin around on the C-frame, you can expect to see surface scratches where the male dimple die runs across the skin.  This is not deep enough to cause concern, however, you want to be careful when moving the skins around.  If you have a 2nd set of hands, dimpling with the C-frame will go a lot faster and probably end up with fewer scratches.

The vertical stabilizer is ready for alumiprep and priming.

We put together the vertical stabilizer.  You can see Tami clecoing the VS-808PP spar doubler to the VS-803PP rear spar.

Look closely at the laptop, Van's RV-7 website on the screen to keep us motivated!!

After putting on the VS-801PP skin, we match drilled all of the skin holes to #40 and all spar to rib attachment points to #30.  this was pretty easy.  Van's should have had builders start with the vertical stabilizer first as this was alot easier and less complicated than the horizontal stabilizer.

Tami worked very diligently at de-burring the hundred's of holes in the vertical stabilizer parts after I de-burred the edges and marked the parts for re-assembly.

Additional Note:  You have to drill a relief notch in the front spars (HS-702).  If you don't read the print and Van's instructions carefully, you will end up with a notch(s) that look like these.  The front spars are made to fit both the RV-7 and the RV-8.  My first relief notch was at the end of the factory spar flange.  However, after reading the print closer, there is a little note called "STEP 1", which states to trim the spar flange back to the bend line...  HUH?!?!  Get out the ruler!!  Dang, is anything going to go right????  I just assumed that the bend line would be at the end of the flange.  I didn't even consider the fact that Van's is using this same part on multiple planes.  Won't make that mistake again, I hope.

Below, I was trying to drill the main rib, nose rib, and front spar on the left hand side of the horizontal stabilizer.  Per the instructions, I measured 1/2 inch from the last hole (shown by the silver cleco), marked and drilled the hole.  The hole came out good with the exception that it appeared closer to the edge of the spar reinforcement than I would like.  A review of the drawing indicated that the 1/2" mark for the hole in the spar reinforcement should have been 1/2" from the edge of the nose rib FLANGE being held by the silver cleco.  I have just over 1 hole diameter from the edge of the spar reinforcement.  I would prefer to have 2 hole diameters.

Tami helped me for about 1/2 hour today taking off the skins. In retrospect, building a jig for the HS is not necessary, but it would be really nice just for working with the HS.

After I "dry fit" the horizontal stabilizer skins, I took off only to realize that I could have fit, marked, and drilled the horizontal main ribs (HS-405) and nose ribs (HS-404).  So I put the left side skin back on and fit the main rib HS-405.

Additionally, I performed the step that countersunk the four holes on the reinforcement angle pieces on the forward HS spar (HS-710 & HS-714).  I also dimpled those corresponding holes on the HS-702 front spar.  This was my first time trying to setup the micro-stop countersink.  I sure seemed like I removed alot of material, but it was the minimum amount which allowed the HS-702 spar to lay flat against the spar reinforcements.

Reading ahead in the instructions, It appears that having a right angle drill will be very helpful to ensure accurate match drilling of the main rib (HS-405) and nose rib (HS-404).  I ordered a right angle drill with bits from Cleaveland Tool.

I assembled the rear spar with the HS-609PP spar reinforcements after I broke the edges of the spar reinforcements.
I installed all hinge brackets and I assembled the HS-411PP, HS-412PP, and VA-146 riveting the assembly together.  This shop heads on this hinge have the correct diameter, however, they do not have the correct depth on the shop heads (rivets were too short, however, this is what was called out by the prints).  A review of Van's instructions state that this may happen throughout building in certain applications and this is not of concern.  A thread on the Yahoo Users Group indicated that other builders are experiencing the same thing.  One builder stated that he called Van's on the issue and they stated that it was not a problem and that they required 6 rivets to hold the assembly which is way over what is actually needed.

Not a lot of detail here, however, this is was my first day working on the aircraft and I spent some time trying to figure out the prints and the instructions.  I will come up with a system.  If I don't go any faster than this, I won't be flying before I retire