Empennage

I finally got started on the riveting process and have got a good start with the rear spar of the horizontal stabilizer. Yesterday, July 27th, Donna and I were going to Norman to see my son Jake and his wife April for supper and since we didn't need to be there until about 3:00 I decided to go ahead and work on the project for a while in the morning. To rivet the 609PP reinforcement bars to the 603PP rear spar the plans call for the AD470D4-6 rivets. The D4 rivets take a lot of omph with the hand squeezer and after setting a few of those I knew I needed the pneumatic squeezer with the appropriate accessories. So I stopped before I wore myself out to bad and we got ready and headed to Jake's house. It wasn't much of a detour to drop in at Brown Aviation Tools and take a look at the pneumatic rivet squeezers. From the picture you can see that I was successful in leaving with a new tool for the project. I'm glad Donna stayed in the car with the dog while I went shopping, becuase the total for what you see is $897.07.

Today I was feeling the need to aviate so I pulled out the C150 and made a trip to Ardmore to see my friend Wayne Warthen and take him to lunch. It's been awful hot around Oklahoma lately and I climbed up to 7500' to find some smooth and cool air to fly in. After lunch there was some clouds building and I went up to 8500' for the return flight in cool smooth air.

It was about 4:00 when I got back home and went out in the garage to put my new toys together. I really, really like the pneumatic squeezer. I was able to enjoy setting the rest of the rivets in the 609PP and then set the 412 and 413 hinge brackets. I also used my new torque wrench to install the 411 hinge bracket to the spar.

3 Hours

Total hours on project = 48 hours