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Horizontal stabilizer riveting continues

March 29, 2020 by admin Leave a Comment

Today riveting continues on the lower left surface of the horizontal stabilizer. As I started this the other day, I’m still in the groove with all the tools set and ready to go.

Again, the riveted started along the HS-708 mid rib (trailing edge up to the spar).

Then I proceeded along the forward spar from HS-708 inboard. Then once that was complete I worked my way outboard (again, not riveting the tip rib).

And then it happened!

Riveting the lower right surface of the skin went really well. So well in fact, that I didn’t even screw up any rivets and didn’t have to drill any out. I was flying high and feeling good.

Then it happened. Just as I was getting the stabilizer assembly ready to flip over and start riveting the upper surface, I though, well, lets put clecos in all the inboard and outboard tip ribs just to make sure we keep everything in alignment.

No big deal, I got the clecos put in on the left inboard nose rib, but nothing would line up on the right side. Strange…

So I flipped the stabilizer over and checked the other side. None of these would line up. Not even line up, the holes in the ribs were no where even close to the holes in the skin. This is going to be a problem.

Long story short, there was only one option for me to do. Those ribs had to come off and swap sides. Luckily these were only held on with 2 rivets each. That’s not to say that it wasn’t a royal pain in the ass trying to get those rivets out, especially without damaging anything!

After getting the rivets hammered out, the nose rib flanges were a wee bit bent, but nothing I couldn’t flatten out.

Once I got the ribs out, I right away swapped side and guess what. Yep, you got it, all the holes lined up perfectly! So it’s now safe to say that I mislabeled these after priming. The left was identified as the right side and right as the left side.

The reason this wasn’t caught, was because there really was no test fitting of these ribs with the skins up until this point. If you go back, you start the final riveting of the horizontal stabilizer by riveting these ribs onto the HS-702 forward spar. Once that assembly is riveted, you then move on to riveting the HS-707 nose ribs to the stabilizer skins. Then you put the forward spar into the skins, and then start riveting. So this mistake totally went unnoticed, until now.

So being in a fine mood right now, I called it quits for tonight after cleaning up those nose rib flanges and shooting them with some fresh primer.

The playlist tonight was Blue Rodeo.

Please comment. I love to hear from my readers.  Thanks again for coming along for this ride, you make my work worthwhile.

Filed Under: Empennage, Horizontal Stabilizer Tagged With: Horizontal Stabilizer, Screw-ups

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Profile Photo 1 Hello - My name is Mike and I'm a true believer that if you can imagine something, it's just a matter of bringing it into reality.

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