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Showing posts from July, 2022

Horizontal Stabilizer 8-1 to 8-2-4

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I read ahead in the plans, specifically section 8 on the horizontal stabilizer, and saw that the first few steps have you preparing the spar and doubler and then priming those before continuing. I decided to just go ahead and do these few steps so that I could prime these two pieces alongside the rudder and vertical stabilizer parts. Before doing anything I decided to straighten the horizontal spar doubler as it had a significant bow. Using my vice and a mallet, and the instructions given in section 5, I slowly proceeded to remove the bow. After a few minutes of whacking the doubler with the mallet, the bow was virtually gone. Using a mallet and a vice to straighten the doubler Next I had to debur the edges and lightening holes of the spar and the edges of the doubler. The spar was one of the biggest pieces I had deburred to date, and I decided to chuck my 1" scotchbrite wheel into a drill to help speed up the process. Deburring the horizontal stabilizer spar edges... ...and the d

Rudder 7-5 to 7-6-11

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Now that the rudder stiffeners and ribs were cut to size, it was time to assemble the rudder skeleton. I just had to pay attention to the overlapping of the stiffeners, but otherwise this was easy and I took time to appreciate how big the rudder actually is! All the spar and rib rivet holes were already final sized. I only had to final drill the stiffener 1/8" rivet holes as they were slightly smaller than final size. Rudder taking shape Next it was time to attach the skins to the skeleton. As usual, I removed the blue vinyl from the inside of the skins, paying attention to making sure that the skins were oriented correctly so that one was left side and the other was right side. I also removed strips of blue vinyl from the outside skin surface along the rivet lines and then deburred the skin edges and clecoed each skin to the skeleton. Prior to clecoing the trailing edge, I trimmed the trailing edge wedge to size. Below, you can see that it was slightly longer than the rudder as r

Rudder 7-1 to 7-4

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In an effort to make my priming efforts more productive, I decided to start work on the rudder so that I can prime those parts along with the vertical stabilizer parts. After pulling out all the parts for the rudder (except for skins) from their various locations around my garage, I began by marking the cut points for the rudder ribs. Rudder parts While examining the parts that form the internal ribs and shear clips, I noticed some brown discoloration around several holes and edges. I wasn't sure if this was some form of corrosion because the brown residue was easily wiped away with a finger, however there was also some roughness left in the aluminum around a few holes.  A quick email to Van's support had them tell me that this was not corrosion, but due to the laser cutting of certain parts (that was recently implemented to speed up kit production) and nothing to worry about. It also appears that the laser cut parts are produced without the protective blue vinyl, so I'll b

Vertical Stabilizer 6-3 to 6-4-3

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In this section I started to work on the skeleton for the vertical stabilizer. The first steps involve deburring all the rib edges, and the plans specifically called out rounding the edges of the leading nose ribs to avoid dents forming in the skin due to faceting. Vertical stabilizer skeleton pieces My initial attempt at rounding the leading edges of the ribs looked like the middle photo below. For comparison, the rib started off looking like the photo on the left. However, when I did an initial fit of the the vertical stabilizer skin to the ribs (and a tight fit it was), I ended up with a very small dent being visible on one side where the middle nose rib was attached. I obviously hadn't rounded enough! So I took the skin off and proceeded to remove more material from the leading edge of the nose ribs while rounding the edges even more. The end result was the ribs looking like the photo on the right. Reattaching the skin, it was still tight but I didn't notice any more dents

Vertical Stabilizer 6-1 to 6-2

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I started building my RV-10 on June 29, 2022. The first section in the plans has me working on the vertical stabilizer (Section 6 in the build plans), so I pulled out all the main parts needed for this section. Below you can see all the parts laid out. Here I had already completed the first step of the build which involves cutting the left and right spar caps using the band saw, and deburring them. Parts needed for vertical stabilizer A few of the parts (spar caps, rear spar doubler and ribs) had some to significant bow in them. I tried removing some of the bow in the doubler by gently bending it back some, but for the spar caps I figured there will be enough rivets holding it in place that I am not going to worry about it. Also, the plans don't call out for any specific straightening of the pieces. Next I drilled all the matching #30 and #40 holes from the rear spar into the spar caps. The vise was very useful here in holding the spar securely as I drilled. No issues with drilling