Today I drilled the left side of the stabilizers and fuselage for the nutplates that will be used to secure the empennage fairing. Once again I reversed the setup of the #6 screws and nutplates so I could use the nutplates as jigs to drill the rivet holes from the top.Once all of the rivet holes were drilled for empennage fairing I removed the vertical and horizontal stabilizers to install the nutplates and so I would have room to countersink and tap the longerons for the lower aluminum empennage fairing.To install the nutplates on the vertical and horizontal stabilizers I had to use the pneumatic squeezer to flatten the #40 dimples that I forgot to leave undimpled when I was building each part. The I drilled the screw holes back out to #28 for the #6 screws. Next I deburred everything and then countersunk the skins for the rivets that will secure each nutplate. Once all of the prep work was done I could finally rivet all of the nutplates to the horizontal and vertical stabilizers.
Left side of stabilizers and fuselage drilled for empennage fairing nutplates
Empennage fairing nutplates installed on vertical stabilizer
Empennage fairing nutplates installed on horizontal stabilizer
