Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Pre-close Inspection forms sent

Tad stopped by after work yesterday and we finished off a few small things. One was to get the hinge bracket bolted to the spar on the stabilizer and the other was to finish off a couple of tricky rivets on the trail edge of the elevator. We did those witht he 4x gun and back-riveted with a small flat plate centred over the rivet. Worked great.
So now we wait to hear from the MD-RA about when we can have it inspected. Wings are the next items to order.... oh and some pro-seal for the emp. trailing edgeds!

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Finishing the Elevator(Before inspection that is!)

Well, we are almost completely finished with the tail kit for now. We riveted the other side of our hinge for the trim-tab on to the elevator and finished off the rivets on the elevator's top side.
A couple of small things to do before we book our inspection. Two rivets on the trail-edge of the elevator and install the hinge bearing bracket on the stabilizer and torqued to proper spec.
Also called Van's about getting our wing kit on the way. It's 25% down at time of order so i think we'll be doing that in the next week or so. They say it can take 6-8 weeks to get it crated and shipped. We'll have ours shipped to Montana and then drive down to pick it up. It's going to be a fun winter!!

Monday, June 8, 2009

Finishing the Trim Tab

On Sunday Tad and I worked on finishing the trim tab assembly. First we riveted the control horn and the bottom of the leading edge. We ended up back-riveting those difficult rivets as we don't have a longeron yoke and using the bucking bar and riveting on such a small piece would have proven difficult. In the end it produced some excellent, very consistent rivets.
Next was to dimple the end tabs for the CS4-4 rivets and drill, debur and prime the hinge. Getting all prepared before we used proseal to fasten the foam ribs inside. To finally close up the trim tab we used the pneumatic squeezer and some patience to set them. At first we used the hand squeezer but found it difficult to use. We drilled those couple out and reset them with the pneumatic.
Then we put the assembled trim tab in the v-block clamps... Done!

Next we'll need to drill the mating hinge on the elevator.
From Pete and Tad's RV-9a Build

From Pete and Tad's RV-9a Build

From Pete and Tad's RV-9a Build

From Pete and Tad's RV-9a Build

From Pete and Tad's RV-9a Build

From Pete and Tad's RV-9a Build

Saturday, June 6, 2009

Trim Tab

Tad was able to stop by last evening and we got most of the trim tab ready for riveting. Tad built the bending break so we could complete the bend of the trim tab itself. This turned out pretty good and we just did a little at a time to make sure not to over do it. After fussing with it for a bit it turned out really good. We were both pretty happy with it.
Next was to bend the tab at either ends. We tried it first on a sample piece to gauge the bend on it and decided to sand the bending blocks a little to ease the radius a bit. Tad did the honours of slowly bending the tab down. We continued match drilling the tab and finished off by countersinking the holes where the hinge will go on the spar. The bottom of that spar has dimples that mate up with the skin.
Tad has taken the parts and will prime them... next will be drilling the hinge and riveting it together.
From Pete and Tad's RV-9a Build

From Pete and Tad's RV-9a Build

From Pete and Tad's RV-9a Build

From Pete and Tad's RV-9a Build