2.3 Hours -
Back to building after a week of vacation in Arizona with my girlfriend and her parents. After a week away from the airplane, I had to spend some time reviewing the drawings in order to remind myself of where I was in the assembly of the left horizontal stabilizer.
Sorry, no pictures today.
First, I finished drilling to size all of the left HS skin attachment holes. After this was done, I had to drill the holes that will be used to attach the innermost ribs to the front spar. These holes are a bit tricky because they are not pre-punched and they have to go through two ribs, the front spar, and the front spar splice angle. If your measurements are off for the placement of these holes, the edge distance may be compromised and you have to order new parts and start over.
To measure for the holes, I cut a piece of cardboard to the same height as the font spar. I then placed the cardboard inside the HS near the splice angle and marked where the splice angles ended. The marks on the cardboard worked as a guide to show me where the holes should be drilled. Once the rib was center punched in the proper locations, I started to drill. When the drill came through the splice angle, I was relieved to see that the holes were perfect!
With these holes, the left HS was essentially done except for deburring, dimpling, priming and riveting. I took the skin off, removed the splice angles, and started everything all over on the right HS. On the right HS, I got as far as clecoing on the skin before it was time to quite for the day.
Also today, I received a pneumatic squeezer which I purchased from another builder on vansairforce.net. I’ll post some pictures in another post, but this is going to save me a ton of time and energy!
