1.5 hr drilling and some riveting of aileron parts.

The 2 small holes on the rib and the nut plate have to be drilled out to fit a 3.2mm rivet (that is not mentioned in the instructions).  I used my chucking reamers (#31 and then the #30) to do the job.

EDIT: I think I was mistaken here.  There are smaller 2.4mm rivets for just this purpose.  I don't think there's an issue with using the larger rivets, but I would have appreciated a note in the instructions that there are smaller special rivets in the kit for this because it was the first time needing them and I wasn't aware of them (I suppose I should have been...).

Cleco'ing of aileron ribs.

Cleco'ing of flap ribs.

2 hrs. drilling and riveting of the aileron ribs

An aileron rib and 2 hinges cleco'ed up.  It wasn't completely obvious from the drawings how these are oriented, but I looked at someone else's build log and figured it out.

All riveted!

This hinge had to have it's holes drilled out for the 4.8mm rivets.  I used a 3/16" drill bit, though with that bit they're still a little undersized.  Been trying to use a hand reamer to get them up to 4.8mm, but it's been a pain...  I ordered a #13 chucking reamer for the 4.8mm rivets.

I found that one of the aileron ribs was warped (the holes were clearly not lined up), so I took fluting pliers to it and it looks pretty straight now (by sight).  Once I cleco the skins on I'll see if any more fluting is required.  Remember the fluting has to be away from the skin (the bend created should be inward, away from the skin).

My fluting pliers.

1 hr today finishing up the priming of the flaps and aileron skins (also the missing hinges arrived and I cleaned and primed them).  Now I can move ahead and build them!

I made a jig out of plastic pipe to hold open the skins when I'm priming them.  Worked well.

Cut a channel and then drilled a hole for the bungee cord hook to fit through.

Here it's holding open an aileron skin.

2 hrs. over the last few days deburring, cleaning and priming the parts for the ailerons and flaps.  No pictures of those exciting activities.. ;-).  I still have to prime the inside of the skins for those parts, so I think I'll make a video of how I'm going to rig that up since it's a little tricky to prime the inside of the skins which want to stay closed.

2.5 hr's pulling plastic off the aileron and flap skins and deburring their edges.  Found that I have 2 wrong flap hinge brackets.

Here I am pulling off plastic.  This 1st aileron took 40 min to pull the plastic, but for whatever reason the rest of the ailerons and flaps pulled off very quickly.



The rudder and vertical stabilizer shelved to make room for the aileron and flap work.

Uh oh...  Wrong flap hinge bracket on the right...

Pulling the plastic from the inside of the aileron.

Running my finger along the inside curl to pull off the inside plastic.

My new cool cleco plier.  It's supposed to make cleco'ing less taxing on your hand.  We'll see.  It's available only here.

Hmmm... An edge of one of the flaps is kinked.  Is it a problem??

Another view.

Miles of clean aluminum. :-)

Deburring the skin edges.

Checking out the alignment of one of the aileron ribs.  The middle piece, the hinge bracket needs to be drilled out to 4.8mm to match the holes of the other two pieces.  Big rivets in those holes!

Description is wrong for 2 of the hinge brackets.  Also shows which hinge bracket is missing.

2 hr's pulling the last of the plastic off the aileron and flap parts (still need to do skins though...) and deburring the parts.  Next is the cleaning and priming of the parts.

1.5 hrs. pulling plastic off of parts for the ailerons and flaps (not completely done...).

I forgot this entry from a couple of days ago.  Finished up the rivets at the bottom of the rudder.  Needed a way to rivet the ones close to the cable attach piece because I really couldn't get the rivet gun flat against the rivets to properly pull them.

Bent the rivet mandrel slightly.

Made this piece so that the rivet is pulled flat.  The drilled hole is angled to match the angled surface on top.

The bent rivet mandrel fits through the hole.  Now the surface against the skin is flat and the rivet gun is flat against the angle piece I made.

Perfecto!

1 hr. checking rudder to VS attachment and unpacking the wing kit.

And it fits and swings!  I built a jig to hold the VS in place.

The kits are very well organized for easy identification of parts for each assembly.

Lots of rivets!

Built a 3rd workbench, so I now have a 16 foot work surface for the wings!

I just added the ability to be alerted by email if I put up a new post.  Just subscribe right over there where it says "Follow by Email".  You'll only get an email when I put up a new post and no other time.

1 hr prepping and riveting the final small skin onto the top of the rudder.

3 hrs finalizing the stiffener rib install and riveting the rudder.  Almost done with the tail kit!

Had to drill the holes for the stiffener rib (they sent me the ribs for the 2, and the 4 has a stiffener that the 2 doesn't have).  Since I didn't drill the holes exactly where they should be had to redrill a little, so I made the middle rivet a bigger one.

All cleco'ed up and ready to rivet!

My new favorite tool!  A chucking reamer (sizes #30 and #20) to fine-tune the holes which are too tight.  Quicker and easier than the hand reamer I was using.

Nearly done!  Still have to do the small skin for the top of the rudder and decide what I'll do for now regarding the strobe.  I don't have the strobe kit, so I may just leave that for later.

1 hr. fitting the skins on the rudder.  The holes in the two ribs that hold the stiffener are missing, so much of the time was getting that lined up so I can drill those holes.

View inside the rudder with one side cleco'ed.

Positioning the stiffener so can drill the holes in the ribs to hold it. 

Making sure it all fits.  There's a twist on the trailing edge, so when I do the final fit I'll want to try and finagle it to remove the twist.  Should be interesting to see how much play there is... 

 Cleco'ing the two skins together on the "leading edge" of the rudder.

Wing kit arrived today!!

4 hrs. finishing the vertical stabilizer.

Cleco'ed up and ready to go!

Left these 2 cleco's in because rivets will not be inserted in the 3rd and 6th holes from the edge.  There will be rivnuts here.

Here's a video I made showing how to install a rivnut (click the little gear thing and change the resolution to 720p for best viewing):


Rivnuts installed.

And it's done!

2hr. working on the VS and skins.  Cleaned and primed the VS and rudder skins and then drilled out the holes for the VOR coax.

Cable connected!

Strobe wire pulled through.

 The strobe wire all the way through.

Drilled out the small hole already in the rib to fit the grommet for the VOR coax.

Was going to drill a hole for the coax in the 2nd rib down, but decided that there wasn't much material on that rib, so I'd just use grommet edging instead.

The coax all the way through!