Had a 4-day weekend, so we decided to fly to San Antonio to visit our good friends and celebrate a couple of birthdays.  About 1000 the morning of our departure:  beautiful day, but unfortunately a high was passing through wich meant wind!  Tonya is a fairly nervous flyer – especially in turbulence.  Putting on her best smile: 

Just had the Dynon radio and intercom installed.  Really convenient how the radio interfaces with the Skyview.  Also nice to have the music input on the intercom:

 Also had the Dynon ADS-B module installed – great to get a traffic picture outside of the terminal environment:

Time for our fuel stop.  Very windy!!  Glad this was down the runway and not across it:

Saw this beauty gassing up:

Welcome to Brookhaven-Lincoln County, MS:

 Beginning to cloud up, but seems to be localized in Louisiana.  Looking at the METARs down the road show Texas in the clear:

Beautiful weather as we enter into Texas:

 Safe and sound in San Antonio:

Coincidentally, and I say coincidentally because I’m currently building an RV-10, there was an RV-10 at the other end of the row:

 You know you’re in Texas when the FBO building looks like this:

Love San Antonio!

 My friend’s children watching some Mexican folk dancing – nice cowgirl hat Sophia!

Wonderful to be with friends and their family:

 Enjoying some ice cream in Fredericksburg:

I won’t say what number comes before the 2 and 5 ;)

 All too quickly it was time to return to the airport:

Filed IFR at 7000 for the first return leg:

 Before long we were above a solid overcast:

Flew the second leg VFR – stayed under the overcast layer that was between 3-4k:

 About an hour from home, the overcast began to break up:

The rest of the flight was uneventful, and without pics as it ended under a starry sky.

18 FEB 14: Page 8-4 step 1: 1 hour

Not much time in the shop tonight – first night back after the long weekend and flying out to San Antonio to visit friends.  Trimmed front spar caps, long/short stringers.  No pics.

19 FEB 14: Page 8-4 step 1, page 8-5 step 1: 2.5 hours

Finished deburring and smoothing edges of front spar caps, long/short stringers.  Deburred edges of HS-1002 front spar:

20 FEB 14: Page 8-5 steps 1-5: 4 hours

Finished deburring HS-1002 front spar.  Clamped and match-drilled spar caps:

 Deburred HS-1007 front spar doubler and front spar attachment brackets.  Clecoed together and match-drilled spar, spar doubler, and attachment brackets.  Final-drilled the HS-1002 front spar and the HS-1007 front spar doubler:

21 FEB 14: Page 8-5 steps 6-7: 1 hour

Only 1 hour tonight.  Countersunk 8 holes in the HS-1007 front spar doubler for 1/8” flush rivets:

Final drilled middle 9 holes in both flanges of the HS-1002 front spar using #40 drill and machine countersunk for 3/32” rivets:

22 FEB 14: Page 8-5 step 8: 1 hour

Disassembled HS-1002 front spar assembley and deburred all parts – no pic.

23 FEB 14: Page 8-6 steps 3-4, page 8-7 steps 1-5: 6 hours

Today was a day of nothing but rib prep.  Began with this lot:

Cut four of the HS-1004 inspar ribs – removed portions of the top and bottom flanges.  Bent the forward and aft end of two of the ribs.  The first 4:

Deburred all the inspar ribs.  The remaining 4 HS-1004s:

Deburred the eight HS-905 nose ribs.  Opened the aft flange of two of the ribs 9*:

 Even though the instructions do not mention it, deburred the 6 HS-904 inspar ribs:

A pretty long, monotonous day with not much to show for it, but it’s all part of the process!  I’m very glad I took the time to build the flange straightening tool – saved quite a bit of time I’m sure:

I am trying to consistently post a weekly build update every weekend.  We are flying out to San Antonio this weekend to visit friends, so I decided to post this week's update a bit early.  Hopefully I'll post some pics of the trip when we return...

9 FEB 14: Page 7-6 steps 6,7,9,10: 3.5 hours

Match drilled all rudder parts – skeleton, skin, and trailing edge wedge.  Disassembled and deburred all holes.  Plans call for breaking the trailing edge prior to riveting.  Not sure if I want to do this or not – will have to research a bit more on the internet.  Nothing left for the rudder except priming, dimpling and riveting.  Boring work session, so no pics.  I finished with some riveting practice and, more importantly, some rivet drilling practice:

10 FEB 14: Page 8-2 step 1: 2 hours

Well, I decided to continue on with prepping parts for the HS.  We are flying out to San Antonio this weekend to visit friends (will hopefully do a write up), so with just a few hours in the evenings during the week to work, I don’t really have the time for priming prep/paint.  No pictures tonight – only did step 1 – deburring the HS rear spar and doubler.  As a new builder, deburring has kind of given me fits as far as getting bogged down with it – i.e. what is good vs. excessive.  I seem to be trying to get absolutely perfect, and I just don’t think there is justification.  Besides taking an excessively long time per part, the amount of materiel being removed is probably unnecessary (focusing on edge distances).   I read a good post about this on Tim Olsen's build log that gave me some insight on deburring.  Part of the time delay for a new builder is just figuring out systems and how you’re going to accomplish certain tasks – like deburring.  I think I prefer hand files for the larger edges, 6” med/fine scotchbrite wheels for smaller edges, and 2”/1” med scotchbrite wheels for lightening holes – I have a pretty good system down now.

11 FEB 14: Page 8-2 steps 1-3: 2.25 hours

Finished deburring, match-drilled holes in the doubler/spar web (paying attention not to drill several holes called out in the plans), countersunk a couple holes in the spar web:

Final-drilled the hinge brackets to the spar.  Ended with:

12 FEB 14: Page 8-3 steps 1,3,4: 2.25 hours

Deburred some old parts (go back a few days ago to OCD deburring post) from the VS.  Final-drilled the hinge brackets/flange bearing, although I did not rivet the pieces together.  These will be my first rivets in the plane.  Although they’ll be squeezed, I’m still excited to rivet my first parts!  Spent the rest of the evening measuring, cutting, shaping, and drilling the two front spar attachment brackets.  Although I’m pretty slow and methodical, I enjoy making the parts – fun to take a piece of angle and form it into a part that will be used on my airplane.  Not much to show, but still forward progress:

Out of sequence, but meant to post a pic of the first part of the first day:

5 FEB 14: Page 6-3 steps 9-11, Page 6-4 steps 1-4: 3 hours

No pics.  Deburred remaining VS parts, final drilled hinge brackets, drilled/dimpled front spar doubler, made rudder stop parts and match drilled to bottom hinge bracket.

Ready to prime and rivet VS

6 FEB 14: Page 7-2 steps 1-3, page 7-3 step 1, page 7-4 step 1: 3.5 hours

So I want to wait until I have a lot of pieces before beginning to prime, so with the VS up to priming and riveting, I began the rudder tonight.  

Not much to show in the pics.  I began the night with this:

And I ended the night with this:

There was a lot of band saw and scotchbrite wheel action making the top and bottom ribs, 7 shear clips, and 14 stiffeners.  I ended by match drilling the bottom rib halves.

7 FEB 14: Page 7-4 steps 2-3: 1 hour

Short work session tonight.  Constructed the bottom rib half and rudder horn.  Also broke my #30 single flute counter sink L  Be careful not to bend the bit with the pilot still in the hole:

Still have the 3 flute countersinks, so I could continue progress:

8 FEB 14: Page 7-4 steps 4-6, page 7-5 steps 1-5, page 7-6 steps 1-5: 5.5 hours

Deburred/matchdrilled spar and rudder horn, countersink striker plates.  Match drilled all stiffener ribs:

Clecoed all rudder parts to the spar and match drilled all:

Deburred skin edges and removed plastic on rivet lines.  Took an hour to burn the rivet lines with the soldering iron.  As I’m going to paint the plane and scuff it up anyway, not sure why I’m keeping the plastic on.  Gonna rethink this in the future – takes too much time:

Trimmed the trailing edge wedge and clecoed the rudder together in preparation to match drill:

29 JAN 14: Page 6-2, steps 1-3: 3 hours

Cut rear spar caps, clamp along spar flange/web, match drill spar web:

Match drill spar flanges:

Remove all, debur, and reassemble:

30 JAN 14: Page 6-2 steps 4-5: 2 hours

Deburr rear spar doubler – took forever!!  Match drill doubler, spar, caps, hinges:

31 JAN 14: Page 6-2 step 6: 1 hour

Machine countersink spar doubler – VS-1008.  First time countersinking – took quite a while practicing and setting correct depth.  I think they came out pretty well:

The rivet is perfectly flush.  Only thing I’m not sure of at this point is if I should allow for priming.  I’m not sure if once I prime, the rivets may be just a hair proud..?  I’m leaving them as they are at this point, as I plan to shoot a very light coat of Akzo primer:

2 FEB 14: Page 6-3 steps 1-3: 4 hours

Deburred VS skeleton parts and cleco together:

Then cleco the skin to the skeleton.  I slightly fluted the rib tips to prevent the tips creasing the LE skin, but still got a couple tiny creases!  I removed the LE ribs and ground off about 1/8” from the tip – should have done that from the beginning!  I was struggling at one point to line up the holes of the skin to the ribs.  I remembered advice from VAF I received recently – if you’re ever struggling, feeling yourself going down the path of getting PO’d, stop and regroup!  Fortunately, I followed that sound advice and took a step back.  It was then that I realized I had the top rib – VS-1006 upside down!  After that, the skin clecoed together quite nicely!  Added a bit of time to tonight’s session (that and removing/grinding the LE ribs), but all and all, it worked out ok:

3 FEB 14: Page 6-3 steps 4-8: 5.5 hours

Final drilled VS, disassembled VS, and deburred all  parts.  Dimpled the VS skin – even though I forgot I wanted to dimple after priming.  Oh well, I’ll remember next time!

Had to wait for my wife to get home to finish a few of the hard-to-reach holes.  Her first time helping with the build!

VS skin all dimpled:

Last step for the night was to countersink the spar flange holes.  I’m using Cleaveland’s single flute countersinks and really like them.  I think I get pretty good results for a newbie!