Misc. wing fit work: 2 hours

• I got under the wings and drilled the fuselage skin to the wing using a #40 hole finder. These holes will get enlarged for plate nuts.
• Fitted the left fuel tank bracket. The plans recommend a 5 degree bend but in my case the left bracket required only a very slight bend to fit.
• Drilled bracket to fuel tank. I used a piece of brass tubing for a drill bushing then enlarged and reamed the hole. 
• The fuel tank bracket is designed to let the fuel tank separate from the fuselage without rupturing in the event of a crash.

Left fuel tank bracket fitted and drilled:


Bending bracket:

Using the hole finder underneath the wings / fuselage:

Finished vertical stabilizer mounting: 5 hours

• Vertical stabilizer is now complete drilled and fitted to the fuselage and horizontal stabilizer! I still need to disassemble, deburr, clean and prime everything that needs it. After that the vertical stab connector plate will get riveted onto the vertical stab forward spar.
• I started this process by making and adding a .063 shim to the horizontal stabilizer. This was recommended by various forum members and will especially apply to my plane because I will have a more aft cg with the ballistic parachute.
• I then doubled checked the fit and alignment of the vertical stabilizer and drilled the connector plate to the vertical stab forward spar using the angle drill.
• After deburring and cleaning up the connector plate I started on locating the holes for the AN4 bolts that secure the vertical stab rear spar to the fuselage and tailwheel mount.
• Locating these holes took a long time - probably over and hour. This is essentially blind drilling with fairly close tolerances. It involved a lot of tricky measuring of the inside of the fuselage and tailwheel mount then transferring these measurements to the outside drill point. This was a case of measure several times then check measurements many more times, repeat, etc.
• I did follow another RV builders advice of moving the upper bolt holes 1/8" inboard. That worked out great and gave me a little more comfort when drilling the holes.
• The actual drilling and reaming of the holes went well but took a while because of the multiple layers of steel and aluminum.

Inside view of the vertical stab spar to tailwheel mount bolts:

Bolts temporarily in place ... good edge distance everywhere:

I double checked after drilling the pilot holes but did not need any adjustments:

#30 pilot holes done:

My custom F-781 connector plate drilled to the vertical stab:

Drilling in process:

More vertical stabilizer: 6 hours

• I made a lot of progress getting the vertical stabilizer lined up and mounted but it was slow going.
• I started out clamping and drilling the aft vertical stab bracket to the fuselage. Unfortunately after drilling and bolting it down I found that the vertical stab angle was slightly off. I made a couple of different sized shims and got it back to perfect again.
• The plans call for the leading edge of the vertical stab to be offset 1/4" and they have you add a washer to one of the bracket bolts. However the rudder hinge line needs to be perfectly straight and when you add the washer it changes. There was a lot of back and forth because everything is related so moving one thing changes another, etc. 
• When I got it close to lined up with the offset and hinge line I found that I was not comfortable with the edge distance on the factory f-781 plate . I tried making a shim but the edge distance problems remained. I ended up making a slightly oversized F-781.
• I'm very happy with the new F-781. Lots of edge distance around the bolt holes and room to work with.
• I got the new F-781 drilled to the horizontal stabilizer and called it a day.

New F-781 connector plate drilled to horizontal stab:

Bending new to match the old:

Making a shim for the original connector plate:

Drilling vertical stab bracket / elevator stop to fuselage (in retrospect the clamps I used were not strong enough and did not fully compress the various pieces which led to the stab angle changing - not a big deal to fix though):

Vertical stabilizer progress: 2 hours

• Clamped vertical stab forward attach plate in place then clamped vertical stab to it and fuselage
• Aligned vertical stab with horizontal stab and checked alignment with tape measure (many, many times)
• Clamped vertical stab attachment bracket / elevator stop in place and drilled holes for AN3 bolts. I started with the angle drill through the pilot holes in the bracket then I used the regular drill from the back side to open up and ream the holes final size.

Drilling vertical stab mount / elevator stop:

Getting everything lined up:

Drilling pilot holes in vertical stab mount bracket:

Clamping and measuring alignment:

Looking more like an airplane!

Started vertical stabilizer mounting: 3 hours

• Before starting to fit the vertical stabilizer I removed the horizontal stabilizer and deburred all the holes on the stab and the fuselage then re-attached the horizontal stab.
• I made the vertical stabilizer attachment bracket and elevator up travel stop out of a piece of 1/8" angle. The first version turned out undersized so I made another more generously sized.
• I located the forward attachment bracket and started researching the best way to get everything lined up.
• While working on this I noticed that the elevator down stop on the quick build fuselage will need to be trimmed significantly to get the correct travel. I sent an email to Van's to verify.

This photo show the vertical stab attach bracket / elevator up stop. Also you can see the over sized elevator down stop under the elevator bearing.

Forward attach bracket and rear attach angle:

First draft of the attach bracket / up stop before trimming:

Finished horizontal stabilizer mounting: 2 hours

• I spent a significant amount of time checking that the incidence of the horizontal stabilizer was correct. I did this by using two 3/16" aluminum tubes through the stab's nose ribs tooling holes. This stab is the new one incorporating the service bulletin and on my aft ribs (hs-00005) the tooling holes are not aligned with the chord line. The stab turned out perfectly level using the standard Van's shims - no adjustment required.
• I carefully located the bottom aft attach holes first and drilled starting with a #30 bit and working up to a 3/16" reamer. I got a nice tight fit for the AN3 bolts.
• Once the bottom holes were drilled and the stab was temporarily bolted in place I removed the clamps and drilled the upper two holes.

All aft attach holes turned out great:

Another shot looking forward with all holes drilled:

First hole done:

Everything turned out level without adjustments:

Horizontal stabilizer mounting: 10 hours

This work was done over several days:

• Researched horizontal stabilizer mounting: plans, video and blogs.
• Did some initial positioning of stabilizer and found that the right aft flange of the hs-00005 rib was interfering with the vertical mounting bar. To fix this I removed the rivets holding the flange to the rear spar and carefully trimmed the flange. I wedged a sacrificial piece of very thin aluminum between the rib and spar to protect the spar.
• Made the forward 1/8" spacers for the horizontal stab
• Triple checked and marked center lines on the aft fuselage deck where the stab mounts.
• Also marked the longeron outline to make sure I could drill with good edge distance
• Clamped stab in place and checked alignment with wings and fuselage. I used the technique of drilling a hole in the tape measure and using a cleco to secure it - works great for accurate solo measurements.
• Once everything was triple checked and clamped I drilled through the stab, spacer and longeron. I bolted the left side down, rechecked measurements and drilled the right. I did have to make a spacer for the left side bolt to clear a rivet.
• I replaced the rivets in the right rib flange and cleaned every thing up.
• With the stab on saw horses I drilled the inboard mounting holes from the bottom up. I then bolted the stab back on the fuselage and drilled the holes through the fuselage structure with the angle drill using the stab as a guide.

Forward stab mounting holes done:

Ready to drill the inboard holes from the bottom up:

Right bolt hole done:

After trimming rib flange:

Starting to check positioning and alignment:

Spacers made from 1/8" bar:

Dad came over to help me get started on the horizontal stab: