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Nate's RV-7 Site
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Date:  9-22-2019
Number of Hours:  2.00
Manual Reference:  Sect 6-12
Brief Description:  Riveting and Final fitting of the Trim Tab, Day 5

Today, went ong mainyl because of the time it took to check, recheck, attempt, accomplish, then double check and triple check my work. All for about 20 rivets. That was a tremendous expenditure of energy on one small but important piece of the airplane.

After giving the Primer a few days to dry, I began riveting the component together. The riveting wasn't easy. First I had drilled and dimpled the side panels of the trim tab WAY TOO EARLY, setting the pitch of the trim tab, BEFORE I knew if it required adjustment. This threatened all my progress to date on the rudder, threatening me with the possibility that I would have to order another kin and start over. More on that later...

I opted to use the pneumatic squeezer teamed with the flange yoke to reach all of the rivets. The other methods, free hand back drilling, C-Frame back drilling (an important opportunity I had not originally anticipated), traditional rivet gun and bucking all presented their own problems. Using the squeezer also had its own set of concerns, but was the most practical solution.

The flange yoke worked good, I still had trouble maneuvering it around. I ended up simply installing it into my vice grip to get one part still and out of my hands. Then holding the piece in place and activating the squeezer. I think in all this I only had to drill out two rivets. I was able to cover most of my rivets in the lower flange of the spar. But shoehorning the squeezer around the tabs and over the spar, and under the skin got complicated, then annoying, and finally frustrating.

The control horns proved to be the most formidalbe. the aft most rivet was easy, however, as I moved toward the forward ribs I wasn't getting the results I desired. I finally ended up using OOOPs Rivets on a few of the holes. It seemed that the standard rivets weren't up to snuff, they were short and didn't leave good shop heads. I didn't want to attempt to use longer rivets as that often makes the process more cumbersome, and if it doesn't work, you have
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