Brief Description: Disassembled the HS Rear Spar for repair
I called Van's Wednesday and it doesn't look like I'm going to skate one bit on this one.
The Good News is that it can be fixed!
The Bad News is that the engineers suggest that I replace the rear spar stiffeners I don't particularly look forward to drilling out all those rivets and undoing my beautiful stabilizer, it is such a step backwards. Trying to make what I have work by drilling out the holes to a larger hole and still end up with a well drilled hole with good edge distances all around looked less practical after our conversation. In the attempt to drill larger holes to encompass my errors and still fit an appropriate bolt size, I would have to also enlarge the stabilizer mounting bar holes. In the end, should I fail to make acceptable final holes, I would now have to repair not just the rear spar stiffeners but also the stabilizer mounting bars. I will just bite the bullet and replace the Spar stiffeners.
I believe in the building of experimental aircraft for the purpose of Education and Recreation. This time it is purely an education.
I am lucky to have a friend that is well grounded in aircraft metal works and works at the Navy's Aircraft Repair Depots here in the Pensacola area. As fortune would have it, he can over last night with an aerospace engineer friend who is in town for some business together. They looked over my horizontal stabilizer and initially thought I would be able to drill out my error to a larger size. But after closer inspection and estimation of just where the new holes would be, they both came to the conclusion that drilling new holes was not the way to go. Their concerns were with the edge distances particularly on the HS Attachment Bars. Their suggestion was to do as Van's suggested and at least replace the stiffeners and correctly match drill the holes in the rear spar using the HS Attachment bar holes.
Today I: 1. Drilled out all the rivets in the trailing edge of VS 2. Drilled out all the rivets attaching the ribs to spar and removed rear spar assembly 3.
