Horizontal Stabilizer Completed
Wrapped up the horizontal stabilizer right before our last EAA-87 meeting and it's hanging over the man cave shop now. Lots of lessons learned and both Leo and Nick inspected my work and have advised me to keep building.
Had one issue of inadvertently using a #40 die set in my pneumatic rivet squeezer when I should have used a #30. This involved 28 rivets of which 12 got drilled. Some where not perfectly centered and needed replacement. Others were just easy to replace being near an edge. I emailed Van's and they gave me the "shouldn't be a problem" response. Add that to "build on" from my three tech counselors and I'm not at all worried.
However, as a triple check I very carefully drilled out two rivets and inspected how they actually looked. The Mothership's advice appears spot on as the rivets looked perfectly formed with the exception of the halo.
Mrs. Keith's suggestion that Russ start answering the phone "Van's Tech Support" was pretty funny but sadly true. It's hard to explain how much fun a 58 year old man is having turning a box of parts, some of which you have to partially manufacturer into something that's going to be able to pull +6 -3 g's, fly 1,200 miles at 200 MPH up to 18,000 feet.
Build On!
Dave Beemer, EAA-87 VP, Single Engine Land, Instrument Rated, 800 hours, 13 aircraft & Experimental Test Pilot.
