Things have been busy just lately, so I haven’t had time to update the blog…

HStab

Last Friday, Mark/Ephraim/I assembled the HStab spar to the skin and nose ribs. Ephraim had already riveted the nose ribs by the time I showed up.

This was my first exposure to driving solid rivets. Mark and Ephraim gave me a tutorial on bucketing and driving solid rivets with some scrap aluminum. After I had driven a line of rivets, we reset with a tutorial on drilling out the rivets I had just installed. After a few iterations of this, it was time to move onto driving rivets into the HStab itself.

Mark drove and I bucked. Ephraim went around the opposite side of the HStab and worked on the same task, solo. Watching Ephraim work at the same pace as Mark and I combined with perfect consistency was pretty impressive.

With the spar done, we ended the day.

Ephraim continued to work without me over the next few days and finished the HStab by himself.

Fuselage

Yesterday was another milestone day. The fuselage arrived! I was busy at work so Ephraim handled receiving the crates.

Some notes on how this works:

• The delivery time to KAWO was about 4 days total
• A few days before it shipped, I got emails from Vans and ABF
• The Vans email contained an estimate and instructions to check damage and report it while the driver was still present
• The ABF email was an invoice. The amount from Aurora to KAWO was $1851.13 and matched the Vans estimate
• I called ABF with contact details and instructions on how to get into the airport to Ephraim’s hangar
• ABF called the day before the shipment arrived to confirm we were expecting them
• The ABF driver called upon arrival at the airport

Overall, this was pretty painless!