I’ve had the tailcone finished for many years now and I’ve been waiting for a good time to complete the 08-6-1 service bulletin from Vans. The service bulletin is for possible cracks in the F-1010 bulkhead and calls for adding doublers. I needed to add an antenna doubler to the belly of the rear tail [...]
Finished the tailcone tonight. Finished up riveting the aft top skin. Cool part about this is I back-riveted almost all the skins. A few places in the aft tail and around the curved edges were bucked, but the rest was all back-riveting. The forward top skin is attached when the fuselage is attached to the [...]
Finished the aft deck this afternoon. All riveted and hardware installed. Just have the aft top skin and bellcrank/battery channel assembly to finish before the tailcone is wrapped up. Not sure when I’ll get the next kit (wings) ordered. I owe the gov this year so that will take a bite out of my wing [...]
Priming is done and I’ve started riveting the tailcone together. Both side skins and the bottom skins are on. It’s taken about 13.5 hours of riveting to get to this point. I was able to back rivet most everything on the sides and bottom. The only exception was a few areas near the aft most [...]
Not much (well, none at all) in the way of pictures this post. I’ve finally finished deburring and dimpling all the holes in the tailcone. Took a while, lots of holes. Started priming and was able to get all the bulkheads and battery channel riveted. Finally got the N-number reserved. It will be N428RV. $10/year [...]
Fabricated the elevator stops and matched drilled them along with the aft deck. Turning into a pro at fabrication of these parts. After a few of them it’s nothing anymore. Also match drilled the shoulder harness brackets. The whole assembly was then tore down and is now lying in pieces on the garage floor. I [...]
Got the top skins on and matched drilled. Everything is now on and match drilled except for a few small parts that need to be fabricated. Took some measurements of the garage to see if I will be able to fit if I attach the fuselage to the tail when it’s complete. Tim Olson has [...]
Was able to make good progress today on the tail cone. The left and right side skins were put on and match drilled to the stiffeners. No extra holes in my fingers today. The pieces are getting larger the further along I get in the kit. Gives you a better idea of things to come. [...]
The last major component of the empennage has begun. All the bulkheads were match drilled then mated with the bottom skin and match drilled. The assembly is hung upside down to attach the bulkheads to the bottom skin. The plans called for doing this on a set of sawhorses, but I just decided to use [...]
