Mary came out and helped pound in the remaining rivets on the other side of the stabilizer…
Then I spent the evening with the squeezer and got the spar attached and the remaining rivets put in. The horizontal stabilizer structure is now officially complete!
Most of today was spent helping Mary paint the living room, but we did have a chance to go out to the garage / airplane factory and finish riveting on the left horizontal stabilizer skin. We also got the right-side HS-707 rib riveted to the skin and the HS-702/707/708 junction blind riveted. This thing is starting to get big!
We got about half of the rivets set on one side of the first stabilizer skin before it got too late and we decided to quit to avoid annoying the neighbors. I'll post a photo of the whole thing when it's done. Meanwhile, Mary couldn't resist hamming it up with the rivet gun. I swear she's turning into a regular Rosie the Riveter. I better get myself into some of these construction photos or else the FAA will end up assigning the repairman's certificate to her.
Here we are about to do the first rib-to-skin riveting of the project, where the center nose rib (HS-707) attaches to the horizontal stabilizer skin. I took the hint from a subsequent step in the instructions and temporarily clecoed HS-708 in place just behind it to help pull the skin down.
And, here's the result. This photo isn't the greatest, but these rivets turned out great. Mary ran the gun and I bucked, which turned out to be a good arrangement. I'll try to get a photo of that next time for all the guys at work who are trying to convince their wives to let them build an RV too. (you know who you are)
Then the forward spar assembly gets clecoed in place in preparation for riveting:
Here's a goofy photo of me trying to get the fiddly little blind rivets into the holes in HS-702/707/708. I think I eventually let Mary and her little hands do this job.
Both middle ribs get riveted to the forward spar:
Suddenly we're starting to have fewer loose parts laying around, and this big assembly is starting to take shape. Cool! Too bad I ran out of time to work on it. Anyway, extreme kudos to Mary for being so awesome and helping shoot rivets. I am a lucky man slash airplane builder.
Matthew Brandes came over tonight to check out the RV-7 factory. He pointed out that the dimples I'd done with the DRDT weren't deep enough. Dang. I had originally been lazy and not bolted the DRDT to the bench, so I wasn't able to yank on the handle with sufficient force to set the dimples properly. So, I had to laboriously re-dimple the three skins I'd done so far (2 HS and 1 VS) after setting up the DRDT so it can be quickly attached to the bench and then removed, which is so boring that I won't bother to post a photo of it.
Oh what the heck, here's a photo anyway:
