Rudder - More parts needed

Progress continues on the tail. I have been trying to prepare parts ahead so that I can have one massive priming session. Unfortunately despite my experience with the wings, I ended up with oblong holes when drilling through the rudder horn. There is a sandwich of four parts as shown below comprising the spar, rudder horn, a backing plate, and the bottom rib. I had all of them clecoed together and needed to match drill. Fair enough. Unfortunately in that process when I disassembled it was clear that the parts had moved along with the drill itself and the holes were oblong. Especially on the four holes on the flange of the bottom rib.

Upsizing is not an option here, as there is not enough edge distance on the bottom rib flange for a larger hole. Another $100 mistake. What needs to happen I believe is some clamping and match drilling with a very sharp drill bit on this part. I will be much more careful on the next piece. It is quite disappointing given the experience level I thought I was building. Two major parts ruined now just in the first few assembles.

Chapter 6,7,8 Part Prep continued. Ruined Front spar

I have been prepping the parts for Chapters 6,7,8 so that I can prime before the weather gets too cold.

Things have been going along well, except for tonight. It never ceases to amaze me the stupid mistakes I can make despite reading closely.

On 08-04 Step #2, you clamp the spar cap onto the front spar and then you are supposed to match drill the #30 holes from the spar into the cap. The cap is supplied undrilled.

The flange of the spar has #40 holes as you would expect because of course the skin will mate up against it and all of those rivets are AD3 Rivets.  I drilled the first four holes as #30 on the FLANGE rather than the web of the spar. I did this even though the predrilled holes in the flange are #40 and I even stopped to think about it as I drilled those up to #30 and right into the spar cap.

Nothing that $60 worth of parts + I am guessing another $30 of shipping won't solve...


Sigh.....

I am not even going to bother contacting Vans on this one because I think that the edge distance for a #30 AD4 rivet is more than the 3/16" that is available.

For now I will just finish the prep on the Rudder and Vertical Stabilizer and prime and assemble those. I will wait on the reorder to see if any other parts get messed up while I put the Rudder together.

Edit:  I actually went ahead and ordered the part....  I was quite wrong on the shipping..  For the $60 in parts it will be $110 shipping. Contemplating my options including waiting for the fuse kit and having it shipped with that. I would complete the Horizontal Stab prior to working on the fuse. Very disappointing and a really silly mistake to make on my part.

Tail Kit part prep - Sections 6-8

The wings are now in storage, and I have re-arranged my workspace and am working on the tail.

 I am back to prepping parts, deburring, match drilling, and generally getting ready for primer. Since it is getting colder and some of these assemblies appear to go together quickly I am prepping the Vertical Stabilizer, Rudder, and Horizontal stabilizer together.

Unlike the wings where I lacked familiarity I can literally see the parts and envision the path to success on the tail kit. The tail cone is the uncertain piece however all of the other surfaces I think will come together in a straightforward fashion.

I did read on VAF that some Horizontal stabilizer rear spars had holes which were mispunched so I quickly clecoed the spar to the skins without all the other pieces and from what I can tell all the holes line up.  Here is a quick photo of that.

And one of the vertical stab.

Wings - 95% complete, moving out of the garage!

It has been a long time since the last update.

The short update here is that not much building has occurred over the last several months. I am making a big step tomorrow however.  I am moving the wings out of my garage into another one that I have access to in order to make room for the start of the tail section. I have in the past built portions of the RV-9 tail so I do know that this will move along a lot quicker than the wings did. Honestly there is a lot of monotony with the wings, and if I had it to do all over again I would consider a quick build for this portion.

Because of the advice of a fellow builder I chose not to finish the wingtips and wait until the aircraft is assembled to do that. I did attach one of them before making this decision. He said that when the wings are on the aircraft things tend to line up in a different fashion.

I have been also looking a lot at costs as well, as now that there are around 13 RV-14 completions it is interesting to see where people end up. The goal here is to have a safe aircraft, IFR equipped without replicating a jet fighter cockpit or worse.  I will come up around that neighborhood though ;)

Update 10/10/2016:

  Move has been completed to the new garage/storage for the wings. While I still stick to my opinion that the wings can be monotonous at times, it gives me a great feeling of pride to look at them mostly completed sitting there in the new space. And as a bonus for better or worse, I know exactly how they were put together.

July 4th update

The wings are just about done. My first experiences with fiberglass cutting and sanding have gone well but what a mess that makes. One point about eye protection is that you really need sealed safety glasses so that there is minimal air circulation around your eyes as the dust goes everywhere. It seems benign however it is extremely abrasive.  Anything that dulls tools made out of metal will do a number on the rest of your body as well.

My left tip is mostly done, I just need to work on the end rib. Happy with the results so far.

After this I will move the wings out of my garage into storage and then the tail begins!

Early May 2016 Update

Current status:

  - Working on my third aileron, this will be a re-do of the right aileron which suffered from trailing edge problems. When I riveted the left aileron everything worked out fine, however the right one had a gap. I tried carefully to drill out the rivets however it is a difficult process to drill out the double flush rivets without either damage or enlarging the hole.

  Right after that will be the wingtips and then I need to remove the wings from the garage and start the tail kit / tail cone.

  Like many builders there has been a bit of a stall as life's other priorities sneak in. I do agree with most, that if you can keep to at least 30 minutes or more a day things move on. I fell into the trap of waiting until I had large amounts of time to work on the project which caused the momentum to slow down.  Back to it!

March 2016 update

Here is the March 2016 update just to keep the blog from aging.

The bottom skins were completed, and the left aileron is rigged. I had some difficulty in getting the bellcrank to turn smoothly in all directions. Some of this was the inside of the bellcrank itself and some of it was the amount you need to file away from the edges of the bellcrank so that it has clearance from the mount when it is mounted in the brackets and torque is applied.

I am rebuilding the right aileron. I wasn't happy with the trailing edge. There was more of a gap than I wanted, and some of this I believe is due to needing to countersink even more the wedge as well as also break the edge a bit more so that it lays down. I am trying to avoid blaming some of this on the use of the sticky tape instead of proseal however now that I have some experience with it I think proseal would help in keeping things well adhered during the riveting. Despite all of this I may just use the tape again.

After this, I am only left with wingtips, and then storage of the wings. There are a few things I would like to improve upon, namely the proud rivets on the wing walk area but at this point it is unclear that I will be able to get enough access to all of them to buck. I may leave them as is. Early in the plans it is mentioned that it is preferable to leave them a bit high however I think that is advice I would ignore if I were to do it all over again.

There are several threads on mice damage for wings that have been stored, and I am thinking about where I will store these wings moving forward. I have no space for this in our garage so I am going to move it to another garage and will just have to check frequently to make sure there are no critters at home there.

Winter update / Doldrums

I think it is fair to say that progress has slowed down, however it has not stopped. This post is mainly a discussion with myself and others out there.

Current status:

- Finishing the bottom skin on the left wing, right wing has been complete for a while now

- Botched the Aileron tube so ordered a new one and am carefully drilling that one.

- Aileron Pushrods are complete. I do agree with others that it seems like a strange design to rely on those blind rivets mated with an aluminum tube for such a critical part, however thousands of RV's have shown it works fine. I would pay a bit more to have a formed part for this purpose.

While reading other RV-14 blogs, I have seen at least one builder let the scope of the large project get in the way of moving forward. What I mean is looking at the cost specifically of the rest of the build and realizing that it will indeed cost most likely $120 - 130K+ to build the plane. I will admit to falling into this same trap. It is well known up front but often in the build you find yourself thinking about how long this takes, how much this costs, etc, etc and start to realize that it is a major commitment.  Not to mention the final (year?) time where you need a hangar and need to go there to work on the aircraft rather than in your garage. I personally will delay that as much as possible.

Seasoned builders will already understand how this happens, and certainly there are hundreds of abandoned projects that fall victim to this same line of thinking.

My version of this is the "How much plane do I need?" line of thinking. I own a Cherokee 180 with a partner although I used to own it myself. So at this point I am quite familiar with what it takes to own. I also have a fully functioning aircraft that does the job. Do I need a much faster plane that costs a lot more? What trips would I take with this, that I have not already with the one I have? etc etc. You can see how the questioning leads you down a path. Where it usually leads me is: Why didn't I just continue building that RV-9A, or why not just sell the whole thing and build an RV-12 since that is less $, the same speed more or less of what I fly today, and much more fuel efficient. Engine overhaul is less, etc. Ughhhhh.....

Then I realize that I am already into the project, and once the other 14s start flying I know I will be happy with my choice.

I absolutely can see though how projects get sold and/or abandoned.  Thanks for listening :) Back to building.