Elevators 9-10-2 to 9-10-7
I started working on assembling the elevators, and this process begin with putting together the tip ribs. I am assembling the elevators in parallel, so everything I do once on one elevator has to be done again as a mirror image on the opposite elevator.
The tip rib halves were assembled using the pneumatic squeezer and the flange nose yoke. No issues here other than having to adjust the squeezer in place, because once adjusted to the correct squeeze depth there was no longer a way to get the yoke over the flanges.
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| Left and right tip rib halves riveted together... |
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| ...also seen from the other side |
I then started riveting the counterbalance rib skins to the ribs, again using the pneumatic squeezer. All except the last 6 holes on each side were riveted at this time. I initially clecoed the right counterbalance skin to the left ribs, and set about 10 rivets before I realized my mistake. However, drilling out those rivets was easy and I'm glad I realized the mistake before setting all the rivets.
While checking the hole alignment when the skins were only clecoed to the ribs, I was a little worried as some rivets appeared to go in at an angle and I though I might have messed up something, but as I started setting rivets from the ends and working backwards on each side (as the plans instruct), the skins were pulled tight and all rivets went in straight.
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| Front of the tip ribs fully riveted |
Next up I riveted the doublers and nutplates to the front spars. These were easily set with the flange nose yoke on the pneumatic squeezer. Initially the air compressor was showing 70-80 PSI, and it was taking a few attempts to fully set a rivet, however once I realized this and set the regulator to 90 PSI, riveting went much quicker.
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| Doublers and nutplates attached, front... |
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| ...and back of forward spars |
The final parts to rivet to the front spars for now were the root ribs and the elevator horns. The thin nose yoke was easily able to get to the root rib rivets given the bend in the flange, and the regular 3" yoke took care of the horn rivets. All rivets were set with the pneumatic squeezer, paying special attention to the orientation of the elevator horns.
Finally I inserted bushings into the two holes that I had upsized earlier for the elevator trim cables.
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| Root rib and control horn attached... front... |
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| ...and back |
Build Hints
- When working on parts in parallel (such as the elevators, and later the wings, flaps and ailerons) be extremely careful not to mix up left and right parts
- It is critical that the tip ribs are fluted as straight as possible to have zero to minimal issues riveting the skins on. This should also help with alignment later when the elevators are attached to the horizontal stabilizer
- When setting rivets with the pneumatic squeezer, ensure air pressure is set to 90 PSI. Lower pressure will cause the squeezer to set with less force, and it will therefore take several incremental attempts to set the rivets
Time Taken: 5.5 hours
Dates: November 27 - November 30 2022
Elevators Total Time: 49.7 hours
RV-10 Build Total Time: 213.4 hours
Priming Total Time: 24.8 hours (not included in build time totals)