Category: Tailcone

So not a lot I can say about dimpling other than there is a lot of it on the tailcone.  Doing this solo was slightly challenging as I tried a few different ways to get access to all of the holes.

In the grand scheme of things, this was pretty straightforward. (I did use the substructure dimples on the bulkheads and ribs but not where the sinks overlapped.)  Take your time and don’t make an oops like I did.  Seems that only once did my attention wander and I ended up making a new hole in my skin.   Somewhat crushing, but not the end of the world.  I was able to drill the holes out to fit a 5- Rivet and ordered some assorted 426 flush head rivets.  My Rivet gun should be able to set it just fine, and I’m having a technical counselor come over to take a look at all my potential mistakes.  I’ll share the completed image of my “fix” in a future update. Read more

Now it’s time to take everything apart and start to get ready for primer and final assembly.  Oh how fun.  Honestly it’s amazing how long it takes to put everything together and how quickly you can pull it apart.   Anyway, I pull the top skins off and get the rear shoulder harness anchors cleaned up and drilled into the longerons.  I do a little bit of cleanup in the garage, then start disassembling all the parts by the aft deck (marking parts as I go).  I keep the plans open so I can make sure I write the correct part number on everything.  On a few parts, I make some orientation marks to ensure I put it back the way it was initially assembled.   Read more

Starting off on page 10-10 and installing the Aft deck on the tailcone.  Initially I was having some issues trying to get the skins to line up correctly with the aft deck, and realized this was a self-inflicted issue.  I initially cut F-1010B a bit long due to my previous issues with the J-stiffeners being too short.  Even so it appeared that with the F-1010B being long it wasn’t an issue (see photo below)

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So I’ll start off saying that I had a lot of camera issues this that are leading some some funky transitions due to lost footage or the camera turning off without me noticing.

Anyway, Starting off I got some help from my wife in flipping the tailcone over and getting it positioned in the garage so I could continue mounting the parts and pieces for the second side skin.  I keep “double-checking” how some of the parts overlap to make sure I am doing it correctly.  While mounting a few of the rear-ribs/bulkheads, I realize that a few of my J-channel stiffeners are actually just a little short of where they should be (edge distance in the images below). This was a bit crushing and required me to contact VANS support for advice.  I actually also did some searches on VAF and was glad I wasn’t the first one to make the same mistake :).   Read more

First step in this video is the bending of the longerons.  I was worried about how this work work and was pretty cautious on how hard I was hitting them with the mallet.  HA!  I ended up really beating on these things pretty hard to get the “slight” bend that was necessary.  Give it 3-5 good hits with the rubber mallet while pre-loading the end of the channel, then take it out of the clamp and test fit it against the side skins.  Honestly after getting more aggressive I did get the proper bend in both of the longerons.  (Later on I was quite happy that when I installed the longeron and it fit perfectly!) Read more