Tonight I worked on the vertical stabilizer (VS) and the attachment of the VS-705 nose rib and VS-704 root rib to the front spar. When building the standard RV-8 kit, this would normally not be an issue. However as I have modified these parts to convert these parts to an F1 Rocket fin, some changes needed to be addressed.
If you recall, in an earlier post I added 2 large 0.125 inch doublers to the VS front spar. This effectively thickened the lower end of the front spar by a 1/4 inch. As the VS skin is pre-drilled, the ribs need to keep their alignment, therefore I needed to cut off the VS-704 and VS-705 rib flanges where they attach to the front spar. New flanges were made out of 3/4 x 3/4 x 0.032 material. The ribs were trimmed back to allow the new flanges to sit tight against the spar and will eventually get riveted to these ribs.
The following pictures are showing this area from various angles while I’m drilling the new flanges to match the spar and rib.
Forward side of spar: Viewed down on VS-705 nose rib.
Forward side of spar: Viewed down on VS-705 nose rib.
Forward side of spar: Viewed up on VS-705 nose rib.
Aft side of spar: Viewed up on VS-704 root rib.
Please comment, I love to hear from my readers. Thanks again for coming along for this ride, you make my work worthwhile.
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