Vertical Stabiliser (trial) attach

Used some clamps to hold everything in place while I installed the AN4-6A bolts and temporary nuts to hold the Vert Stab on.

Ta-daaaa - just a trial unfortunately...

The centre hole here is the alignment hole while the other two are the match-drilled #12's

And the lower bolts holes deburred...

Not much more to do with the Vert Stab for a while now. Only have the top sections of the aft fuselage left before the whole project gets shelved while I find somewhere to expand to.

Dimpling the Top Skin...

Hmmm, that ain't going to work very well...

Had to shave a little off the dye so it wouldn't scrape the flange...

    

Here's the difference...

It's much easier doing these ones using the back plate and rivet gun.

Got to be careful though, as it's very easy to squish these too far...

Aft Fuselage Rear Deck

I prepped quite a few pieces this round saving on setup time.

This is the F-01414 - Aft Deck, primed and dimpled. Only the 8 holes shown here are AN426 type rivets, all the others are AN470 round head rivets.

...plus these four on the rear flange...

F-01409 Frame

I only noticed after I'd primed, that I hadn't rounded the faceted edges. Hence the next few shots here showing where I ran the edges over the Scotchbrite wheel.

I'm still amazed at how accurate the pre-punched parts are. Every now and then I need to run the drill through a hole to clear out some paint and maybe a tiny bit of aluminium, but for the most part all these parts fit together perfectly - Nice job Vans!!

This is page 10-27 - Aft Deck Installation

It's always satisfying finally putting these parts on to test fit, knowing how much work has gone into preparing the parts.

Yeah I know, the bench is really messy.

Had to find the longer 12" drill bit to ensure it was perpendicular to the face...

Even with the 12" bit, the drill was very close to rear flange.

This shows the angle I had to be on for the hole to be perpendicular to the face...

Drilling holes in the F-01411D Horizontal Stab Attach Bar Support Angle. This is one of the chunkiest pieces of angle in this part of the kit.

When you understand what it's attaching, I'm ok with that.

Now this one little rivet in the corner was trying to be difficult. I needed to contort the bucking bar into that small space to set that one.

Finally got to use my double offset cup rivet set - I knew there was a reason I bought it.

You can't have enough tools!!

Unfortunately, not everyone is competent in using them. Oh well, it's a learning experience. This one obviously came out...

Almost there.

Elevator trim tabs & brackets

Preparing the Trim Tab Access doubler and brace - all etched, primed, dimpled and ready to rivet.

Riveting in the nutplates was a little fiddly but got it done with no issues...

There's something about getting the rivets flush and consistent.

Riveting the Trim Tab Pushrod is a little different in this case as both outside pieces (E-1401A-L & -R) are countersink and riveted together - I should've practised this on some scrap parts first. As it turned out, this version of the Trim Tab Pushrod became scrap anyway.

The first countersunk hole was too large...the second, much better. The below photo shows I've (for some reason) countersunk the incorrect sides of E-1401A-L & -R. I still riveted them together to see which rivet size would suit better as the one listed in the plans (AN426AD3-3.5) seemed too small so I went up to an AD3-4.5 which looked much better.

The flush side of the rivets looked really nice and was hard to tell it was rivet if you ran your finger across the top - it was very smooth.

I ended up using this as a test-piece mainly to find the right length of rivet to fill the shop-head side up as much as possible. As you can see below, the one left was the recommended size but didn't come close to filling up the space. I upped the rivet length from 3.5 to 4 which was the one on the right.

and another shot of the nice flush AN426AD3-4 rivets...

 

Rocket dropped past to grab a beer so I set him going on dimpling the Elevator Trim Tab parts instead...

He seems happy with his work...

Wasn't happy with this rivet so....

 I drilled it out and reset it...

Unfortunately I didn't notice one of the holes wasn't dimpled until I was a couple of holes away riveting. I had to drill about 4 rivets out to give me enough give in the skin to get the dimpler in there to fix it up.

Trim Tab Pushrod Horns riveted

Almost ready to stick it together.