Elevators - John 4 hours, Mike 2 hours, Tyler 1 hour

My oldest son came home yesterday from A&M to surprise me for Father's Day.  It was a great surprise and he, my youngest son, Ryan and my nephew, Mike, went out for dinner.  Great Surprise and a great day.

He is studying Aerospace Engineering so he is very interested in the RV Build.  He came over this afternoon and helped for a while.

I started the day off with bending the close out tabs.  This is a little nerve racking because once they are bent, it would be nearly impossible to change it.  If it didn't come out correct, it would be another replacement part order and I don't want to do that on something as large as the skins.  I clamped the skin to my workbench which is made of maple and then started the bend with my hands and a small block of wood followed by using the flush rivet head on the rivet gun and then finished with the hand seamer.  I think they came out real nice.  These are pictures from the end of the day when things were match drilled and clecoed together.

I moved on and clecoed and then match drilled the E-910 hinge reinforcements to the spar and then started building the elevators.  Mike and Tyler came out and things started moving a little faster.  It is nice to have someone move the clecoes around while you match drill things together, just have to come up with an easy system for doing so.   We were able to get to the point of having the skins on both sides and attaching the elevator horns.  It is nice to have something that resembles parts of an airplane in the garage so I left it that way.  The next step is to match drill the skins to the spar/ribs and then disassemble/debur/prime. 

I started to take off the protective covering off the wrong side on this one... 

Just have to be careful handling it.

Horizontal Stabilizer Part 2 and Elevators - John 6 hours, Jim 3 hours

Started getting the Inspar Ribs and Nose Ribs prepped for assembly.  Trimmed the 4 Inspar Ribs by removing the flange (2 with just flange cuts and 2 more with cutting of the small flange also).  Bent the Inspar Rib to match the angle for the fuselage and built the HS Cradles.

We were able to assemble most of it, but the HS-1013 Spar Cap Replacements haven't arrived so I clecoed the old ones in for spacing and match drilled the ribs to the front and rear spar, then disassembled everything for deburring and priming.  Also cut the holes to route the trim cables through.

Since we had to wait on the replacement parts, it was time to skip ahead and start on the Elevators.  I cut the E-1008A/B parts while Jim maned the scotch bright wheel and debured and smoothed all of them.  As he finished them, I clecoed them together and then match drilled the parts together.  

I also assembled the Tip Ribs before calling it a day.  

It was a good day and very productive even though I am waiting for PreKote and the Spar Caps...

I will have a lot of parts waiting for primer once the PreKote comes in.  I have a feeling that it will be a couple of long days scrubbing parts to get them ready for primmer.