This weekend I was able to get a friend of mine (Dan) to come over so I could rivet the aft top skin on the tailcone. As he was doing me a favor, I was crawled into the tailcone with my backrivet set and gave him a backrivet bar to hold on the skin. This was the first time I tried this method of backriveting, and honestly it worked really well! Dan figured out the process really quick and was awesome in helping me get this beast riveted up. I will say that being inside the tailcone and riveting overhead was hard on the arms, but not impossible.
I think there was a VAF post regarding how to protect the ribs when crawling into the tailcone, and honestly I thought I would put a piece of plywood or a 2×6 across all the ribs as a platform for me to sit on. This was somewhat thwarted by where my stock lumber was and all the “stuff” in the garage at the moment. I’m sure that would have worked (mostly), but that seemed like a lot of effort for a temporary platform. I ended up finding all the old pillows and some blankets that we had in the house and using them to build up / protect the bottom skins, j-channel, and ribs. I piled them high enough and over top the rudder cable bracket so it wasn’t poking me in the back. Once done, I just had to slowly and carefully shimmy my way into the tailcone on my back so I could backrivet.
Most of the rivets set perfectly, and I think I only have 5-6 rivets I’m going to have to drill out. Not bad all things considered. One or two of them I’ll have to set with a bucking bar due to tight clearances for the backrivet set. Others I was just sitting at a funky angle and smeared the rivet.
I’ll attach the video below, but as I was crawling into the tailcone, the cord for my shoplight was DIRECTLY in front of the gopro. I did move it about halfway through, and I’ll end up posting more for the sake of completeness.
I also had another neighbor stop by to check out the progress. Always makes for a fun conversation since most of them just think I’m nuts for building a plane.
While I was inside, I also put Torque Seal on all of the bolts since I already torqued them all to the correct settings. This is just a goo that hardens and will give a visual indication if the bolts start to come loose.
[inpost_fancy thumb_width=”200″ thumb_height=”200″ post_id=”447″ thumb_margin_left=”0″ thumb_margin_bottom=”0″ thumb_border_radius=”2″ thumb_shadow=”0 1px 4px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2)” id=”” random=”0″ group=”1″ border=”” show_in_popup=”0″ album_cover=”” album_cover_width=”200″ album_cover_height=”200″ popup_width=”800″ popup_max_height=”600″ popup_title=”Gallery” type=”fancy” sc_id=”sc1508769737589″]
This basically finishes off the Tailcone chapter and I’m just about done working on the empennage. I have one or two more updates for the Empennage attach chapter (possibly next week) then everything goes into storage till I get to the fuselage. After a lot of thought, I decided I’ll attach the HS, VS, elevators, and trim tabs to the Tailcone, but not do the fiberglass or attach the trim servo to the trim tabs. This will just have to wait for final assembly since doing those things will make storage for me a major pain in the rump. I want to get a picture of all the parts fit together before it goes to storage. Wing kit will be ordered soon with hopefully an early January delivery date.