Horn Drilling 11-03 & 04
Having carefully set up the elevators the next job is drilling the horn pivot holes with a #30 drill bit. Having clamped the elevator mass balances to align with the tailplane, the horns are clamped…
May 2018
A twist in the tale!
I decided to see how true the elevators turned out, with a view to deciding how to play the elevator horn drilling. Another Stanley tool, a Fatmax SCL Laser Level, proved very good at telling…
11-02 Attaching Elevators
Having finished the aft fuselage, I’ve been taking advantage of the better weather and doing some flying! My Fuselage & Wings shipment is due to arrive on Friday 1st June, and I’d like to get…
Aft Fuselage Finished!! 10-30 to 32
After 163hrs of work the Aft Fuselage is finished. L Top Skin The top side skins fitted like a glove. It never ceases to amaze me how accurate the parts have been fabricated by Vans,…
Top Skin 10-29
Time for some more back-rivetting to attach 3 pieces to the top skin prior to attaching it to the top side skins. The manual specified 3-3.5 rivets for everything, but the skin doubler/fuselage rib/top skin…
Fin Match Drilling 10-28
Quite exciting this bit, since it actually looks like a real plane! Vans say cleco, clamp and line up using a #30 drill bit. This all seemed to work, but I also propped up the…
Static Ports 10-22
Fitting the Cleaveland Static Air Vent kit proved a simple and satisfying little job. Rather than cut the tubes to length first as advised by the manual, I started on the right side and routed…
Baggage Area Painting
As mentioned in the last post, I realised that several other areas in the structure will be visible in the baggage area. Although a bit of extra work, in order to keep my options open,…
Cockpit Paint Decision – priming top skins 10 – 30
After asking various paint professionals and getting opinions from various forums, the consensus for a durable cockpit paint seemed to be “2-pack” . So I toddled off down to my local paint supplier and they…
Aft Deck 10-27
We managed to set a lot of the aft decking rivets with the squeezer, but a few could only be reached with the gun. The two rivets highlighted in the picture proved to be very…