September 25, 2001

I left town and visited with family for almost a week, so the project was on hold during that time. But as soon as I got back, I went right to it. Jen helped me finish riveting the left HS underside. We finished the front spar, and I squeezed the forward edge rivets. All that's left of difficulty here is to rivet the rear center rib, as you can see by those 8 remaining clecos. The 3 clecos on the outboard leading edge will stay there until the HS comes out of the jig. I can't get a rivet squeezer in there because the 1/4" bolt gets in the way.

Since I had changed my mind about using flush rivets vs. blind rivets on the forward underside of the center rib, I had to drill out the rivets holding the inboard forward rib onto the front spar. In that process, the holes were unfortunately enlarged. I decided to go with bolts instead of rivets. Here you can see the cadmium plated AN3-3A bolts.

Here's a view from underneath, where you can see the AN365 nuts.

And here you can see the right side, still clecoed so that I can remove this rib when I go to buck the inside of the center rib.

I decided that I would violate the so-called suggested sequence of assembly. Since riveting the HS skin to skeleton is a loud and tiring process that can really only be done during the day due to the noise level, I decided to go ahead and start assembling the vertical stabilizer (VS). Here's the spar, stiffener, and hinge brackets, clecoed together and ready for final drilling.

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Dan Checkoway ()