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I spent most of the weekend at a Y Princess camp out with my daughter. I did get in a few hours on the project on Sunday afternoon, which was unfortunate as you’ll soon see…
My first major screw up. I dimpled HS-702 and countersunk HS-710 and HS-714. I made extra double sure that I was dimpling and countersinking the right side of everything. That went fine. I think my problems started with the dimpling. I think I dimpled HS-702 too much. I started with a shallow countersink and kept adding a 1/4 turn to the countersink depth each time. I got to a point where the dimple disappeared into the countersink, and that’s where I should have stopped. I could never get the skin to lay completely flat, I think because the pneumatic squeezer warped the surface of HS-702. I kept going deeper and deeper with the countersink to the point where it was obvious I had gone way too far. I could call Van’s and see if there is some work around. However, this is right at the attachment point of the HS to the fuselage. I don’t want that area comprimised in any way. At this point, it’s fairly easy to start over with a new HS-710 and HS-714. Since HS-702 is match-drilled to those pieces and I figured out that I drilled the holes past the bend when I wasn’t supposed to do that until the last step, I decided to get two new HS-702 pieces as well. So $80 and 4 hours of work wasted. Not too bad. I just need to be more careful until I get all of the tools figured out. That will be especially true when I start riveting. As things get put together, it will be more and more difficult to fix mistakes.
After that, I took it easy. I de-burred some ribs. I measured out and marked the holes for the forward end of HS-405. After the screw up, I didn’t want to make any more mistakes for the day. I spent about an hour reading through the rest of the instructions for the HS, laying out the pieces and figuring out where everything fit.
