Well I just got off the phone with Ken at Van’s builder support with not so good news. I was reading a builder site ( http://www.rv8.ch/article.php?story=2004031620072395) as I always do before a start a particularly difficult task, or at least one that creates some anxiety. Well Mickey had an issue on his QB where the F810C angle was not built wide enough so that when he drilled the outboard hole in the Horizontal stab spar he ended up with no edge distance on this angle. The bolt should be centered on the longeron, it goes down through the HS forward spar angle through the longeron and then through the F810C angle. As you can see from the photos one side of mine is great and the other is off by about 1/8”. Talking with Ken it seems the best thing for me to do is to remove the aft deck and install a new angle. It just so happens my kit came with a pre-punched angle that you cut out the F810, F811 and F812 angles. I only needed the F812 angle so the others I thought would be scrap, good thing I don’t throw out these extra pieces.
So Quick Builders beware, there may be some hidden nuggets out there, and thanks Mickey you more than likely saved me some headache
I could just try to drill out the angle only but then I would be trying to drill out rivets from the shop head side, something I have never done. Ken thought that many times it is much quicker to go with what seems like the long route, because what seems like the fast route can turn out to be a mess. I guess this is part of the education part of home building!
Nice tight fit the way it should be
The opposite side, I might not have the edge distance
