#18
 

I did some head scratching over weather or not I should cut this now or wait till later and how much to cut. "measure twice, cut once" seems to be stuck in my head.



It doesn't tell us any measurements and it is not mentioned in the plans until the attaching of the empenage to the fuselage later on. Thus I questioned if I needed to cut this now or later.

I decided to do it now, because of the note. It says to be careful not to cut into the HS-609PP. Once the rear spar is all riveted it is going to be more difficult to make a clean cut and with everything primed it is going to leave a mess.

I looked at DWG 27A to see how it all comes together. Here are the Up and Down stops but I decided to just cut all the way down to where the HS-609PP is.

I temporarily attached part of the elevators to see what needed to be cut.

Used this to mark my cut lines.


I drilled a whole to make sure I wont get stress cracks here


I decided to Cut with a Dremel. Easy!


Final result

Don't think it matter to much. But on my case the cut needed to be just a tiny bit shy of the end of the HS-411PP Hinge Bracket. So I would think one could just mark that and cut where the hinge bracket ends and be fine as well... YMMV

#19
 

Hello again...

I have been reading, posting and asking questions about the RTV used on the rudder & elevators and how to use it... What I found out is that there are at least as many opinions as there are people.

As a last resort I asked the mothership and I intend to follow their lead on this. Maybe I should have asked them sooner but I always feel silly asking them question. They must get a million a day!

Question:
Answer:
So there we go... Al my problems gone all of a sudden... By the way I don't want to use pro seal because I would have to import it and it would be somewhere around 80$ and I wont need much of it. I just don't want to spend that kind of money. It will also go bad before I get to use it again.

However I found a product made by Sika that seems to be perfect. It is made for metal. It can be used on unprepared metal and primer and it is silicon free and non corrosive. I would call that a winner! It comes in 3 colors. Here is the Sikaflex 521 UV TDS

#20
 

Riveting the VS:

Here it is, in all of its glory.

After my epic prime war I had to lick my wounds...As I had mentioned I used a water based primer first and I made the mistake of using it on ALL my VS parts. YES ALL OF THEM! Unfortunately the quality of this product was not acceptable to me. So I added a good 15 hours of cleaning bad paint of every single rivet whole and all parts of the VS. That totally sucked!


This was just with my nails...


Aceton will do the trick but in the process it becomes glue a like and it just was a huge PIA to get all of it off. I had already dimpled the wholes so I used Q-tips to get those clean.

After the clean up I primed all the parts again with my new paint and it came out beautifully. Although nobody will ever see the inside it would have bothered me to have bad paint on some part of the plane.


These were some of my first flush rivets on actual airplane parts. They are "ok"


I label all parts but only in places that are later riveted to other parts. I used some tape here to hold the skin tight to the rib while riveting the top rivet there.


Some more rivets...


As you can see I am a bit of a "messy" but it works. One side of the VS is all done! I was so freaking excited! BTW this is the moment I realize polishing may look cool. Not sure if I already scratched to many of my parts.


View from the top. I added a way to get a cable up there if I choose to. Not sure that I will, but I always thought a build in camera on top of the tail would make a neat view.


The VS is the easiest part on the first kit. I stated with it and I don't know why VAN's doesn't have everyone start with it but this rivet is the intersection on the bottom rib...Gave me grief. Mainly because I think the plans call for a rivet that is a bit short. I over drive it and it then choose to drill it. Drilling rivets at this point wasn't the problem. But I made the mistake of using a hammer to get the back part out and I didn't use anything to back it up with. So what happened is that that rivet is on a single tap of the rib and I bend it inward while hammering the rivet out. Now bending it back was next to impossible because the skin was in the way since the rest was already riveted together...So yea this is the worst rivet on my VS and it's just going to have to stay this way. I used the longer size rivet on the other side and worked much better on first attempt. I send this picture to VANS and they said to leave it be.

#21
 

Building the HS:


First thing the plans has you do is this: I choose to follow what other people have done with a piece of wood and then drilling the wholes.


I marked these to line up in order to get them back together correctly after priming.


I chose to prime everything so I also primed this.


The back of this was hard to buck without scratching things. I cannot get any good rivets with the Tatco hand squeezer so I just use the gun on everything.


"Satin finish" on the left...

#22
 

place holder

#23
 

Front Spar of the HS:


First thing to do is to modify the front spar HS-702 because it is designed for the RV-8 this came out "ok" but I didn't fully understand the plans until I was done.


Enlarged the wholes and take of the extra material


Next thing is the 6? bend.


The HS-710/714 also need the bend. I used the cardboard template like the plans say

The front spar has the Service bulletin and is kind of tricky. I read of a lot people having problems with edge distance on the HS-00001. I must have drawn and measured 10 times before drilling. One of the wholes is close but they are all within limits of 2xD of the 1/8 rivets. Success.


Manual trim line whole on the left side only


Unibit taped to the correct size


First real mistake. Don't know why I did this but I did make the cut on both sides. So yea there we go.


Since ED is always a problem I cut this quite conservatively. But after realizing what the reason for this cut is anyhow I could now fix this.


I drilled these with the long drill bits. 3 out of 4 were perfect. 1 walked away from me a bit. At the time I didn't see it but this was very close to having to start over the whole front spar because of ED. I measured this 3 times and while again really close I am still within limits. Consulted VANS on this and they said it is fine as long as its within limits.

#24
 

Drilling the Skin of the HS:

This is the first time Vans has given me parts without punched wholes. I think this is becuase this part is used on the RV-8 as well and this way they can use it on both.


After straightening I marked center lines on all of them.



Now I could make sure I hit the center of the ribs by aligning the wholes with the lines. But I didn't dill just yet. I just used a different color to mark the whole. An X so to speak and took it out again to flute it. Now with knowing where the X is I knew were it was safe for me to flute. You really dont want to flute where a rivet needs to go. So flute and back in for final drilling of the whole.


Skin all drilled on


Ups. I dimpled one of the wholes I wasn't supposed to. No big deal double flush set in the squeezer and it is fixed

#25
 

Riveting the HS together:

Rear Spar:

After drilling the rear spar and priming and taping the wholes that need to be left open for the ribs I riveted the rear spar together. I used 4-7 rivets on all of these instead of 4-6 because they are just a better fit in my opinion. The rivets on the brackets could be 4-8 but I didn't have any of those.


Finished product. All done :)

Front Spar:

First thing I had to do is find out what wholes are left open and tape them.


First smiley...I was just thinking "this is going great" Whenever that goes through your mind: STOP AND WALK AWAY!


Luckily the drilling rivets is no longer a big deal. So I just do it and move on


This one I had to drill twice. Not sure why there is always that one rivet that doesn't want to go the way it should. I'm starting to believe it has a lot to do with the prep work. Maybe something doesn't line up or the whole isn't 100% and that must be the difficult rivet.


All done!

#26
 

Riveting the HS-707 nose rib:

I had to think about what the plans say here for a while. Especially why they tell you to optionally use the pop rivets on the bottom side. That is because I did it differently than the plans tell you and then pop rivets on one side only no longer make sense. If any then on both sides.


I clevoed the HS-707 and the HS-708 together and clecoed them to the skin while it was standing. This worked much better than on the table. On the VS on this part I got a little dent in the skin because I did it on the table. So that was the reason for my deviation.


One side first. When I pulled the skin in I just had to be quick because there is a lot of tension on the first clecoe holding the skin.


I used another jig type mount to hold everything while I started to rivet. I also put my hoody in there in case I drop something like the bucking bar in there and ruin my day!


On the front rivets of the ribs I had a hard time making sure the rib and skin are sitting tight on top of each other. So I put a little wood in there to help with the pressure. This worked out really good!


These guys were just hanging out there being proud ;) yea I drilled them also


DONE!


Next was to put the front spar back in. I also deviated a bit here because I riveted the HS-706 in before putting the spar into the skin. I didn't see a reason why doing it later would be beneficial. It was just about 11pm while I was putting in the first pop rivets on this airplane. Simple enough! I called it a night after that. All the rivets on the HS left side were done in one long afternoon! I do enjoy riveting.


Just for fun after cleaning up the shop a bit I layed the rear spar onto my HS. Kind of cool to see it like that.

#27
 

Today I spend about 2 hours in the shop. The first thing I did was inspect my work I did the other day. I also wanted to see what the pop rivets looked like from the other side.


I stuck my cell phone in there with a flash light.

Next I moved on to the flush rivets of the left HS skin. I actually managed to get all of them without drilling a single one! and I did it in just about 2 hours. So this was a first! I called it a night after that.


Well I supposed I left the 2 top one on each side of the HS-00005.