Tonight my buddy Garet and I worked on forming the trailing edge skins of the elevators. We build a bender as per the Van’s RV buildings manual. The bending tool is essentially a couple 2 x 6’s and door hinges. Just make sure that the wood you buy or use is straight. To keep the trailing […]
Elevator Skin Stiffener Back Riveting
Tonight with the help of my buddy Garet, we tackled riveting on the elevator skin stiffeners. The riveting is accomplished by using the back riveting technique. With 2 of us, this went really smoothly and all in all pretty quick. We saw some good visual progress in our work tonight. When installing the stiffeners I […]
F1 Mod – Rudder Spar Stiffener Angle
Today I spent some time working on the rudder. This is one of the F1 Rocket mods needed to strengthen the standard RV-8 rudder. The mod is to add a beefy aluminum angle which is made from 6061-T6, 1 1/2 inch by 2 inch angle, 0.125 inch thick. Here is a diagram of the stiffener […]
Right Elevator Assembly
Building of the right elevator is now underway. Lots of straight forward work here so I’m not going to elaborate too much. At this point I’m just following the RV builders manual instructions. I got as far as being able to apply primer to the elevator skin once all the stiffeners, spar and ribs were test […]