Sunday, December 17, 2023

Rudder - Close out

Installing the rudder skin is much the same as I have already been doing.

Cleaco the skin in place and adjusting the order to minimize any oil canning.

You do have to be careful with the training edge on this part because you can deform or "twist" the v-shape that is pre-bent into the skin.

I started adding Clecos from the trailing edge forward to maintain the v-shape until the holes in the skin were aligning to the pre-drilled holes in the ribs.

I need a sharp nail punch or drive pin to help align the tabs on the ribs as they are slightly miss aligned.

I have a few of these from Amazon: Drive Pin Punch

I Clecod the whole skin together on both sides to fit rivets and clear drill any holes that didn't line up.

I found that if things weren't lining up it was more likely that I was doing something wrong or the tabs on the ribs needed to be bent back into shape.

One important note is to make sure the rivets are fully capturing the tabs as they are very flexible and are prone to bending away when the rivet or Cleco is inserted.

I used an Articulating Borescope to check that all of the tabs have been captured by rivets.

I had some trouble where the skins wrap together around the leading edge and I Clecod those together prior to riveting the main spar this helped to square the skin to the sub-frame.

Propeller Installation

It was finally time to install the propeller on the engine, this has been a long time coming.       The blades are unpacked one a time and i...