My First Oops

Damn. I was wondering when it would happen, but it happened sooner than I wished it had. Tonight I made my first mistake. I started in on drilling one of the ribs for the empennage tonight. Drilling the forward flange of the HS-405 rib is a bit of a trick for a lot of builders as the plans don't show a ton of detail and can be a bit confusing. After doing some searching online, I found another builder's log which details how he drilled the rib and it looked like a pretty solid plan to me. So I started out using his advice and was cruising along, thinking I was doing really well. Until I got ready to drill the second hole. Then I realized my mistake.

Everything clamped and clecoed in place, ready to be drilled

First hole drilled

It's tough to see in my first picture, but I had clamped the reinforcing angle (HS-714) upside down before I drilled. Unfortunately, I didn't catch this until after I had it drilled. This wouldn't have been too big of a deal had it been the bottom angle, as these holes drilled in the bottom angle are centered vertically on it. On the top angle, though, they are not centered vertically so this hole I drilled will not work on the opposite side if I were just to flip it over. I'm considering calling Van's builder support tomorrow to see what they say, but I'm nearly certain I'll have to buy a new angle. I measured where the new hole would be if I arranged it properly and drilled again, but the two holes (the correct one and the oops) would be very close, and I doubt if this would provide enough support to keep the rivet from pulling through to the oops hole. I will likely have to buy a new one and start over. Luckily this is a cheap and fairly small piece so shipping shouldn't be too much. If I keep this pace up though, this project is going to cost me A LOT.

The hole my index finger is pointing to needs to be offset to the opposite side of the angle.

I've learned some good lessons from this mistake, but it is still very frustrating that I made it. It was just a stupid mistake that I attribute to rushing to get too much done tonight. I can tell doing things slowly and deliberately is going to be a challenge for me on work nights. I get up at about 5 or 5:30am every morning, so I like to try to be in bed by 9pm or so. By the time I make the 40 minute drive home, get changed, eat some food and get started, it's already almost 7pm. Up to this point, this has left me feeling rushed to get a significant amount of work done. It really comes down to expectation management though. I just need to convince myself that I likely won't make much significant progress during the week. And I have to learn to be OK with that. As I said earlier in the log, my goal is just to build my airplane. Nowhere in that goal is there a timeline. So from now on, I will work really hard at slowing myself down and double- and triple-checking my work. As I've said before, as long as I'm doing SOMETHING almost every night, I'll be happy. Now I just have to act that way. I know I will still make mistakes, but I want to minimize them.

So, tonight was a lesson-learning night. I'm sure it won't be my last of those.

Rib-Straightening Tool

Today I had some school work to take care of so I didn't get much done on my project. I know that I need to get my Master's degree finished up in the next couple years, so I am going to make sure I dedicate enough time to that. I did, however, take some time to build a rib-straightening tool. I'd seen this on Van's Air Force and after trying to straighten a few ribs by hand, I decided it would be worth my time to build one of these now. The flanges of the ribs come out of the manufacturing process being a bit off from the 90 degree angle to the web which they have to be. So it's up to the builder to bend these flanges to the 90 degree angle. This tool makes doing that very quick, easy and accurate. I used some hard wood and cut an 11 degree angle in the wood, as suggested by some other builders on the Van's Air Force forums. This allows me to straighten the flange while still allowing for some spring-back that happens in the metal.

Side view of the rib-straightening tool

Another view of the tool

I was pretty happy with how the tool came out, though there are a couple improvements I plan to make to it at some point in the future. I misdrilled one of the holes for the bolt that attaches the steel to the handle, so the handle is offset a bit. No biggy for now... I used it to straighten all of my empennage ribs after I finished it and they came out great.

Forward Spar Work

I set my first rivet! I had to rivet the elevator hinge bracket around the elevator bearing with six rivets squeezed with my pneumatic squeezer. This was fairly simple and turned out looking pretty good. 

First rivet of thousands!

Front side of the bracket all riveted

A view of the back side

After that, I worked at shaping the reinforcement angles that will attached to the forward spar. I had to round off the ends and then bend them 6 degrees, according to the plans. This was pretty simple and they turned out pretty well.

Angles shaped

Angles bent

Next, I started work on the front spar. The front spar comes in two pieces. These were designed for use on the RV-8 and have to be trimmed down for use on the RV-7. I got the spar flanges cut back according to the plans and then created bend reliefs so I can bend the tabs appropriately. I used my flies to create these reliefs, but the plans say to use a drill and then files. It probably would've been easier had I used the drill first, but they still turned out pretty well.

Forward spar flanges cut back

Reliefs started... had to make them a bit deeper with my files 

To finish out a productive day, I cut two of the front ribs according to the plans. The aft flanges on these ribs have to be cut to allow them to fit around the reinforcing angles I worked on earlier.

Aft flanges of the ribs cut

This was a really productive day. I hope every weekend day will be this productive, but I know life will get in the way sometimes. I'm already finding myself losing time on the project to doing stuff with my friends. But I'm OK with that... I don't know how long I'll live in California and I want to take advantage of that while I'm here. This all just goes back to my insistence that I not have a set timeline for my project. As long as I'm working consistently on the project, I'll be happy.

Started!

Well, as of tonight, I can officially say I am building an airplane! I got started on the horizontal stabilizer. Most of the work done tonight was on two reinforcing bars that are attached to the rear spar of the horizontal stabilizer. I had to round off the edges of the reinforcing bars and match drill them to the rear spar. I then had to match drill a few brackets to the spar as well. It wasn't a ton of work tonight, but did take a good bit of time. I worked for probably five straight hours.

The reinforcing bars clecoed to the rear spar of the horizontal stabilizer

One of the brackets match-drilled.

The point at which I stopped tonight.

Tomorrow I will continue work on the rear spar and hopefully get started on the forward spar. I'm having fun so far! It still seems surreal to think I am actually doing this, but I am happy with my decision and proud to have started. Hopefully more to come tomorrow...