Category Archives: Empennage

Next up is the vertical stabilizer. Together with the horizontal stabilizer, this makes the empennage, or tail, of the airplane. We’re working on the stationary parts of the tail. There are also control surfaces that need to be made and … Continue reading →

“Congratulations! You’ve finished the first major sub-assembly on your new airplane.” Yep, feels good! Right there in the instruction manual, section 6, rev4, page 6-4, was this simple sentence that brought us our first “RV grin”! So we’re at around … Continue reading →

Early on in the process, I noticed this note on the plans, which calls for trimming a couple notches out of the rear spars in order to give the elevator horns enough room to move to their bottom stops. This … Continue reading →

Now that we’ve disassembled the horizontal stab parts, it’s time to prep them for riveting! WOOHOO! Unfortunately, this is one of the most tedious and time consuming parts of the project…and one that will be repeated a LOT… 1) deburr, … Continue reading →

This weekend was a couple great sessions down at the hangar. We spent 8 hours working on the horizontal stabilizer, culminating in attaching and match-drilling both the skins. While the initial work was a bit intimidating, this weekend was mostly … Continue reading →

I think this is our first real issue with the build. During the preparation of parts HS-702 (front spar), there was quite a bit of modification required. I had to cut off part of the flanges and hammer the scar … Continue reading →

This work was a bit challenging. We started with 2 front spars (HS-702s), and had to make a number of modifications to them in order to build the assembly. The spars are basically aluminum channels. The raised sides are called … Continue reading →

The next day at the hangar we continued working where we left off with the horizontal stabilizer rear spar. Next up was to attach the brackets to the spar, which would be mount points for the elevator…the flight surface that … Continue reading →

Well it’s here… Day One of the build! We start on the Horizontal Stabilzer Rear Spar, or HaSaRdS! Just kidding. The main activity for this phase is to “break” the 2 long rear spar reinforcing bars. They’re pretty thick, and … Continue reading →