I know it's been some time since I posted anything, so I thought I'd update the blog.

Unfortunately the building of my project has been put on hold as I've been working in New Zealand since October 17. I am missing it a lot and wish I could have it here with me.

Unfortunately, must have income to continue to build and fly, so the job must come first. Should the job here become full time I'll consider moving it here but for now it's sitting on shelves and in crates.

Hope to be back to building as soon as possible.

After getting the ok from Vans about the dimples, i proceeded to remove the 10 rivets for the fairing. Removed a couple of other rivets that I wasn't happy with as well.

Inserted the 10 rivets on the other side and the unhappy ones and then I was happy. The horizontal stabiliser was finished as per the plans section 8.

On the wall it went.

Now to the elevator.

John Butler came around again today to help what we hoped would be the end of the horizontal stabiliser.

Well, we riveted the final section of skin and made a few errors again so more rivets needed to come out. 

We cleco'd the rear spar in place then I realised there were amendments to the plans on the Van's website. These dealt with the incorrect installation of the front spar. Well guess what? I had my front spar orientated the wrong way. We thought about it and thought we would have to drill out all the rivets and then redo the whole skin. Eventually, I thought if we just put the rear spar in the other way (as it's all symetrical), I would only have to drill out 10 rivets as this made what was the bottom to now be the top. On the top skin I needed to leave open 10 holes to attach the fairing later on. 

So we went ahead and rivetted the rear spar in place. I then confirmed with Van's that it was ok to remove those rivets and that the dimpling won't be a problem. They confirmed all ok.

​

Passed my Flight Instructors Rating. Now to more building......

Well I went away on an overseas trip to see the Red Bull Air Race in Chiba, Japan and to my best friends wedding in Manila, Philippines. After getting back I concentrated on my Flight Instructors Rating and Australian Air Force Cadet flying camps, so no work done in June.

I had been working/studying pretty intensely for the Flight Instructors Rating and the test is tomorrow so I wanted to have a day of doing something completely different. So building was the go.

John Butler came around again and we continued the riveting of the skins to the horizontal stabiliser. This is definitely a two person job. We made a few errors that required drilling out the rivets but that's not too much of a problem.
​