Today we planned on flipping the canoe. Julie and I had about twenty rivets to get finished, it ended up being about thirty-five. We hammered about eight in a row. I could not figure out why they just were not getting driven correctly. Then it dawned on me to check the air compressor. It had tripped a circuit and the air pressure was down around 10 PSI. No wonder the rivets were not going in correctly or easily. I drilled the bad rivets out and we went back to work. Riveting is a lot easier when the air pressure is at the correct level.
After finishing up the riveting our friends Chris and Lori showed up to help flip it over. I was more than a little concerned about damaging the fuselage in the process. Turned out to be too easy. We got it over, then checked for level on the longerons at the Center Section and across the Center Section. For the roll axis (left and right) the aircraft was perfectly level. On the pitch axis the tail was too low. We moved the saw horse forward until the pitch was also level.
As the plan states, you are looking for any twist in the airframe. I put the F-714 aft deck in place to check for the twist. As you can see in picture three, there is no twist at all. I wish I could say it is because I am a great builder. Really, it is a tribute to the well designed kit from Vans.
