Storing the Tailcone

Finishing Section 11 as far as it was reasonable without attaching the control surfaces to the tailcone, I realized I had a storage problem. The tailcone was still using up the better part of my little shop and it was tedious to move around it. With the wing kit arriving in a few weeks I had to find a better place for it for long-term storage.
Fortunately, we have a really long covered patio and so the decision was to find a cozy place for it out there.



On the right side you can see part of the wing cradle I inherited from Tom who just finished his RV-6A and didn't need it anymore.
As with the Stabilator, storing a structure like this outside requires sealing it up so the various Southern Arizonan insect wouldn't find a way inside. I covered up the tail with a left over Harbor Freight coupon flyer.



I think this is more than appropriate as most of the tools i am using to build this RV are indeed provided by HF.
Covering the front was a bit tricky as it's a large area to fill.



I used painter's paper that is used to cover the floor before starting a messy job.



With the structure sitting halfway inside the box the parts came in, I believe it to be roll resistant enough to not get blown over even in a bad storm. This has to last until the front fuselage is done at gets then joined with the aft part.

Oh, BTW, if you were wondering. The length of this tailcone is precisely 9ft.

Trim Servo and Arm Assembled

The crimping pliers arrived in time on Friday and they are really a good bargain considering the high quality and comparably low price. So, if you are considering getting some, take a look at SteinAir's pliers before making your choice.
The crimping was real easy and I finished the wiring on the aft tailcone as well as on the trim servo.





The final assembly of the actuator arm for the trim servo didn't reveal any surprises either.



I later found out that I messed up one crimp on the servo that I will have to redo when I order another male spade connector from Van's. I'll probably wait with that until I have something else to order with it as shipping a 40 cents part is ridiculous.

Now I stored these parts away until I get to final assembly.

Van's is busy!

It appears Van's business is thriving! Since I ordered my fuselage kit and them cashing my advance payment check early August, I hadn't received a confirmation and schedule letter yet. I asked them via email if it got lost or if they hadn't sent it out yet. Barbara took two days to just answer my email telling me that they are behind on these letters and the scheduling as they have so much to do.
I am glad at least they are having an increase in sales! That ensures they will still be there when I need some parts in the future. Bad part is I don't know when the fuselage is going to arrive but by then I should be still busy with my wing kit.
No problem!

BTW: I should get my crimping pliers before the weekend to ensure that I can play around with those connectors and I should be able to test the trim servo then.

When everything goes wrong ...

Puh, that last session in the shop was quite hard to take. Pretty much everything went wrong.
At first I wanted to continue on the trim servo assembly and crimp the connectors onto the wires. The day before I had stopped by Harbor Freight and grabbed crimping pliers as I have always preferred to solder instead of crimping, so I didn't have any yet.
The tool looked cheap, was cheap and turned out to be completely wasted money. The pliers are so flimsy they didn't even put a dent in the barrel of the connectors. I am now waiting for real pliers to arrive from SteinAir.
Well, with this operation stalled, I moved on to put together the actuator arm for the trim tabs or ASTs. This one worked pretty well until I hit the part were I was supposed to rivet in two AD3-9 rivets. These are pretty long and I hadn't dealt with any rivets that long yet. I thought it was an easy job as I had just purchased this new pneumatic squeezer.
That did not turn out well at all though. The problem was that the squeezer's piston had hardly moved when it already engaged the rivet and at that wide open angle the piston does not develop enough force to compress the rivet.
So I took off the yoke and put it on the manual squeezer. Now, I expected a quick job and - yuk - failed again!
This time the yoke wouldn't open up enough to even get the rivet in between the dies! I had to take out the backstop of the movable arm of the squeezer to trick it to say "Ahhhh" a bit better and get that rivet in between. My anger at that point was quite high and you can tell by the so-so squeezing job I did on them. I think it'll be alright as they are not really structural and only have to hold the threaded insert in the tube.
And finally when pulling the AD42H rivets on the tube brackets, I didn't push hard enough on one of them and the head didn't have full contact with the bracket surface. Argh! ;-) Fortunately, one of my ancestors must have been a smith as I was able to artistically apply the force of a light hammer in a way to convince the rivet head to make a full contact.
Whew! I think none of the sections has given me so much headache so far. I wonder if it's me or just bad luck.
Here's the end result of a few hours of cursing and cussing:

Nutplate Mystery Resolved

I wanted to add photos to the previous entry but when I took them tonight, I noticed I had screwed something up and went ahead to fix it. So I ended up working along a bit further and I'll be adding photos to this entry instead as they somehow belong together.
Remember how I said I spent some time yesterday to verify that a certain nutplate that looked different from the one in the plan is actually correct? Well, I can confirm that Dave's motto: "if doesn't look right, it probably isn't right" has been proven yet again!

Here's the photo of how far I got yesterday. Look at the nut plate closely.



ok, this one shows an almost diamond shaped nutplate. The one in the manual did not look like that but was rather wavy in its shape.
Now look what I found in one of the bags that seem to contain all the hardware for the trim servo.



Aha! Among the nuts I was looking for there's also this nutplate and it happens to look just like the one in the manual. Let's see .... It turns out this one is listed as a K1000-8, exactly the one called out in the manual. Now what did I install then???
A closer look at my sorter showed it was a K1100-8, my brain must have refused to accept this little detail in lieu of another nutplate of similar name. Until now!
So, I started to drill out those rivets, put the right nutplate in place and got to use my new rivet squeezer again! I am getting better at developing a feel for it already.



Looks nice and this time it is correct.

The rest was relatively easy although quite time consuming. Pressing in those plastic bushings and filing them down without filing into the metal was pretty hard and almost impossible to avoid as they are supposed to be almost flush with the surrounding material.
This is how far I got.



What's that cleco doing there?? Well, when I was looking for those nuts, I must have dropped one and they are really tiny? I was looking for it for a while but could not manage to retrieve it. So, it's more stuff to get from Van's. BTW, I can't believe that they really just add the exact amount for parts that have a value of maybe 3 cents. I'd really think they wouldn't run into bankruptcy if they added one of each of these cheap parts above the very necessary amount to avoid having to spend a few bucks on shipping for such a mishap.

UPDATE: I ordered the "missing" nut and some other parts. Once they arrived I found out that the nut was not missing at all. It just turned out that the quality of these little nuts (MS21042-06) is so bad that in my case 2 out of 8 would not go onto the corresponding screw. At least trying to start the nut with my fingers failed in these two cases. Fortunately, I had ordered two replacement nuts - just in case - and it turned out to be just enough as one of the just received nuts wouldn't start either.
25% failure rate on these nuts is not acceptable in my eyes. Particularly because Van's provides only the necessary amount of 6.

Anyway, I'll continue with the other parts and put the nut in when it gets here some time next week.
I just noticed this photo doesn't show the pressed in bushings. Oh well, you'll have to wait until tomorrow then ...

Trim Servo Cage Coming Together

No photos yet, I'll add them tonight when I get back from work.
I started working on the trim servo cage to avoid or, at least, ease the withdrawal pains that Dave experienced when waiting for the next kit.
As I had done almost all the prep work during previous steps, the cutting, deburring, repeat parts of this job were already done. I even had them primed already, so that was left to do was to rivet the nutplate and the stiffeners on.
The manual called out for a K1000-08 nutplate but it SHOWED a nutplate that did not look at all like the one it called out for. So, I spent some time reading ahead, localizing the screw that was supposed to go into it and verifying that indeed I had the right nutplate which was the K1000-08 the manual had asked for.
Countersinking was a piece of cake, now that I have enough cages to let them sit perfectly adjusted and ready to go whenever I need them.
With the last order at Avery (the clecos, remember?) I couldn't resist to also get a pneumatic rivet squeezer. They had a sale and my hand was just hurting too much still from the job on the rear bulkhead as if I could have ignored those huge savings ;-).
Anyway, this nutplate was the chance to try the squeezer on a piece that would be easy to repair if something went wrong. It worked like a blast! I should have so gotten this tool earlier!! I might have actually enjoyed the work on the rear bulkhead and finished it in a fraction of time. A wonderful tool and it will definitely keep its value. try to find a used one if you don't believe me.
Everything else was business as usual. I used to manual riveter for small places to pull the pop rivets with their manufactured head on the inside of the cage and that ended the night in the shop.

Tail Cone Finished

It took just about an hour to finish the tail cone this morning. As I had already set almost all the rivets to be riveted I could start right away doing what I like most - riveting that is.
I'm almost feeling a bit sorry and empty right now after finishing this milestone. Or is it just the fatigue from raising my arm holding the riveter so high and so often in the last few days ...
To get to this point I spent 67.0 hrs on the tail cone, which adds up to 183.5 hrs invested so far.



The manual riveter for tight places came in quite handy when riveting on the half rib that supports the nose cone of the vertical stab.



and another look into the abyss - this time it looks much more realistic as the top skin is on now.



And one last peculiarity that the plans are not really explicit about. I was worrying when I read the steps and I did not look this up in other blogs ahead of time and finally decided to go ahead and make an educated guess and I just confirmed with Dave's blog that my guess was right.
Please look at the three rivet lines and follow them to the edge of the structure.



The middle one that attaches the J-stiffener to the top skin is indeed riveted all the way to the edge and this is the exception to the no-rivets-seven-inches-from-the-edge rule that applies to all other holes of the tail cone. If you follow the plancs step by step you kind of think that this is what you're supposed to do but they don't explicitly tell you that really mean it.
So, to ease your mind... YES, go ahead and rivet the J-stiffener all the way to the top skin!
And if you didn't - not a problem either, you can always ADD a rivet. Removing one is the part that isn't so enjoyable.

Alright, I'm done with the first kit!
I am not going to attach the control surfaces to the tail cone just yet - at least not permanently as it will be much easier to store the cone with those attached and I still can't afford a hangar around here. I think I'll just find a place on the covered patio in the area where the wings will be stored once finished.

I'll add some silica gel inside the cone and cover it up with paper just like I did with the Stabilator which should allow it to sit there for a while just fine.

Now what am I gonna do???? The wing kit is about 4 weeks out and not much else to do on the cone. Maybe I do attach the empennage and install the trim servo and all the other little things so I wouldn't have to do this later. I can take the surfaces off again and put everything into storage then.
Hm ....