Started Vertical Stabilizer

I love weekends. They provide a chance to rest, relax, sleep in, forget about work, catch up on cleaning my house, and most importantly... BUILD! I really like the uninterrupted, productive work sessions I'm able to have during my weekends. Tonight was no exception. I started work on my vertical stabilizer. A lot of builders will start their projects by building the VS... and after working on it for a while, I can see why... it is much simpler than the HS. The whole assembly is made up of only eleven parts. I had a lot of fun working on this tonight.

To begin I had to flute the ribs, then cleco the skeleton together and match drill it.

The rear VS spar, stiffener and hinge brackets clecoed together

The whole VS skeleton clecoed together

After match drilling the skeleton, I clecoed the skin on it and match drilled the skin. Pretty simple!

The VS all clecoed together... looks awesome!

I then was able to begin deburring some of the parts before deciding to call it a night. So far, so good. I think I could have the VS ready for primer by the end of the weekend... if I don't make any mistakes like I've made on the HS!

It still pumps me up to see these parts coming together. It's also still somewhat surreal to think I'm actually building an airplane. Every time I hear a plane fly over or see one on approach to the runway near my house, I feel a little boost in my motivation to keep things moving so I can get this thing into the air and realize my dream. Still a long way to go, but the progress I've made so far is exciting!