Now that the elevators, trim tab, vertical fin and rudder are all assembled as far as I can before the “Pre-Cover” Inspection (Canadian regulatory requirement), I’m finally getting to the home stretch of the empennage. All that I have left to do is assemble the horizontal stablizer.
It’s been a while, but some of the riveting had been started. Tonight I was able to finish the riveting on the rear spar.
Elevator Hinge Brackets
I began with riveting the elevator hinge brackets to the rear spar (HS-412PP and HS-413PP).
Just to refresh, as this RV-8 tail kit is being constructed for the F1 Rocket, one of the mods that I needed to add to “beef up” the RV-8 parts was to add a 0.063 doubler on the forward side of the outer hinge brackets.
Reinforcing Bar Riveting
Once the hinges were riveted on, I then finished riveting the rear spar reinforcing bars (HS-609PP). The picture below shows some of the area where I needed to finsh the riveting. The big 0.125 thick doubler is on the front side of the rear spar (another F1 Rocket mod). The 4 rivets on the right side are for the elevator mid-span hinge, and the rivets already set at the left side are all -5 rivets (5/32). Due to the edge distance of the reinforcing bars, that was as far as I could extend the -5 rivets. The remaining rivets are all -4.
Here is one of the obligatory selfie images to demonstrate that it is actually me that is building this thing.
And here is where my work completed for the night. All riveting is done. That horizontal stabilizer in the background is for the S-51. Eventually, I’ll get there too. One piece at a time!
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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