26 APR 08 - Right Elevator Assembly - 4.0 Hours
Yet another installment in the guest-worker
program in my workshop. Josh Anderson attended the same RV assembly workshop in
Oshkosh that I did. He was in Oklahoma City and asked if I needed a hand pounding
some rivets. Of course!
We began assembly of the right elevator skeleton in accordance with the instructions.
Smooth sailing. I did deviate from the plans by riveting the E-704 counterbalance
rib to the E-702 spar and then rivet the E-703 tip rib to E-704. This gives you
better access to the aft flange of E-704.
Or should I say Josh riveted all of those ribs! Thanks again Josh for all of the
hard work in the shop!
In an earlier post I alluded to the problem that I had while drilling the elevator
horns to the root ribs. Here is one of the ribs I spoke of. You can clearly see
that at least 3 of the 6 holes are slightly oblong. According to the Milspec for
riveting, oblong holes are cause for rejection.
I am sure there is some tolerance for slightly out of round holes, but there doesn't
seem to be an established standard. Since this is a structural part, I wanted to
be sure to have an acceptable solution. After consultation with some experienced
builders and tech counselors I elected to add 4 rivets to the horn assembly.
I feel at ease about this solution. I ensured that I had sufficient rivet spacing
and edge distance for the four added rivets.
After the skeleton is riveted together, we set the two rivets on the E-713 counterbalance
skin that wouldn't be accessible once the skeleton in.
Riveting the counterbalance skin to the right elevator skin.
Josh finished up the riveting by setting all of the flush skin rivets with ease.
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