Things WERE going really well.....

[Dave Bernard]

Until I drilled an extra hole in my HS-702's today.

I've got everything prepped and primed and ready to rivet, but when I clecoe'd the fwd HS spar reinforcements to the HS702s, it looked like I had neglected to drill a hole...

In hindsight I should have realized this wasn't plausible and that something was fitted up wrong (I had the HS810 on upside-down) but for some reason I grabbed my drill and drilled the new holes with the intention of deburring and repriming and being along my merry way.

The result is two new holes VERY close to the holes the rivet will actually go through. At the narrowest point the holes are .037 and .05 inches from the rivet hole.

The optimist in me says that since the Hs702 spar is actually the meat of the aluminum sandwich, the rivet would not be formed on this mistake, but on the 810 and HS405, which might make it OK and a "build on!".

The pessimist doesn't even want to think about new 702's, somehow match drilling with already dimpled skins, etc, etc, etc....

Free dinner to the first tech counselor who gives me the good/ bad news!



DB

[KayS]

a statement from a non-technical counselor...

if you would be me, you would enlarge the original holes and deburr everything nicely to replace the rivets with an3/an4 bolts. nobody will see it later. the holes will be most likely not be totally circular but with approbiate washers it should be ok. you could also reinforce the aft and fwd side with small aluminum strips.

but you are not me, so calling vans is an option. they got payed to deal with stuff like this.

Kay

btw... which band is that on the youtube video? beautiful airplane!

[jtrollin]

I replaced the parts.

[frankh]

To fix things like this..Tricky to explain but easy to do.

Imagine this you take a piece of scrap the same thickness as the part with the 2 holes that are too close together.

Make this piece say 2" long and drill one hole in one end of this piece.

You then cleco the plate thru the hole you want.

Then rotate the plate about this hole to a place where there are no holes in the spar. Then drill two holes thru the plate into the spar. Rivet this plate to the spar thru the two holes.

Now you have replaced the damaged hole with a fresh hole and doubled the strength cus the plate is held on with 2 rivets.

Of course you have to put the plate somewhere where it will not interfere with any other parts but its a simple repair for a structural part that is hidden.

Cool eh?

Frank

[Av8torTom]

Frank,

While dimpling my trim tab spar, I wasn't paying attention and poked an extra (out of place) hole with my pneumatic squeezer right next to where I should have. A little different than you since it did not also involve an extra hole in the skin. I flattened the dimple and then I patched the spar as shown below in the following 2 photographs. Then I used a longer rivet with the hole in the patch