DATE: 11/18/2024 TIME: 10:48 – 3:58 ~ 5:00
Continuing with the process of the Vans RV-10 tailcone assembly. I began by using my trusty soldering iron with the rounded tip to make strips of the outer vinyl on all the skins so that they could be removed prior to dimpling. The inside vinyl needs to be removed completely for priming anyway.
This post contains information from a number of different section 10 pages because I had completed various steps “out of order” as defined in the manual based on convenience and expediency.
From the pictures below you will also see that I moved the tailcone setup and my primary workbench for more convenient and useful snapshots.
EJ, my trusty assistant showed up as I was nearing finishing but we had to go back a step to match drill the stiffeners in F-1047 A and B. I could not do that on my own as I couldn’t hold the stiffeners in the correct place while at the same time drilling the end cross through the skin holes. This is outlined in the assembly manual as Page 10-12, steps 6 through 9. You have to be careful here to not miss the tab holes in the bulkheads.
You can see we had a lot of clamps on the aft deck F-1014, actually on the whole tail cone, to keep the tail aligned for final and match drilling.
Net step was do some match hole drilling and final drilling some of the brackets and braces in and under the aft deck per steps 3 through 13 on page 10-13. I had made the brackets described in steps 1 and 2 previously.
At this point we had a lot of clecos in the aft deck and continued on page 10-14 with the removal again of the top skins and the top skin stiffeners F-1047A and B. to facilitate the positioning and drilling of the F-636 shoulder harness anchors which are attached to the F-1032 left and right longerons. At the same time we drilled the F-1073 side skins for the cover plates F-824 A and B for the nut plates. It is difficult to see some of the detail here because of camera location.
At this point the tail cone was pretty much ready for priming. I had to trim the triangular portion from the right skin and there was a bunch of dimpling to be done but first came the disassembly of the tail cone. I thought I would load some of those snapshots because there may be a view that is useful to someone else that is not included in other sliders / galleries.
