My dad helped me again today and we spent several hours in the garage working this afternoon. We started by riveting together the ribs and forward spar for the Vertical Stabilizer. The 8 rivets ended up taking longer than I expected, as we tried to ensure the rib flanges were tight against the spar. With the use of some small clamps we were able to hand squeeze the bottom rib rivets, which came out great. The rest of the rivets were good except for the last one on the top rib, where a gap formed between the rib and the spar flange. Not really sure how it happened, but there’s not much clearance in there and it lifted just a fraction. I’ll check with my tech counselor tomorrow, my guess is it’s ok. Shouldn’t be hard to drill it out if needed and redo. It was a huge help having my dad to help hold parts and double check alignment, etc.
I’m going to leave the Vertical Stabilizer here and wait for my tech councilor visit before proceeding. So we moved onto the Rudder, and started by separating and deburring the various skin stiffeners and flanges. We wrapped up after final drilling #30 holes in the rudder spar for the shims and doublers.
