DATE: 2024-08-21 TIME: 1:30
The VS was “completed” for the time being and placed up on the storage floor out of the way today so that I could start on the rudder assembly. I sent some pictures to John DeYager , technical counselor, for him to take a look.
After assembling all of the parts onto the bench we stripped the vinyl from the skeleton components and removed strips from the skins which appear to be quite a bit thinner than the skins of the vertical stabilizer. Today was largely getting familiar with the rudder components.
There are 7 stiffener strips that need to be cut and trimmed into 2 separate left and right parts so we started the process of marking those. I had all of these strips replaced as the original ones I received in my kit were laser cut and even though it wasn’t necessary, I do not want any laser cut parts in my airplane. This turned out OK because I had 7 scrap stiffeners on which to practice marking and cutting with the tin snips (it only took 1).
One other comment, even though the manual still talks about final size drilling we are finding so far that most of the vertical stabilizer and rudder parts are already final size drilled which saves a considerable amount of time.
