Today started by finishing up the vertical stabilizer from yesterday. It was disassembled and we deburred, countersunk and dimpled all holes and edges.
The rudder was next up on the list. The construction of the rudder is significantly different than the other surfaces we've worked on so far. It's shockingly light weight! Instead of having ribs for all of the support, there is only an upper and lower rib, and all of the support is actually provided by angles that act as stiffeners. Van's supplies a bundle of angle for the stiffeners. These all have to be cut and shaped to fit the rudder skin. The manual is woefully inadequate in describing how the full length angle needs to be cut to provide the correct number to match the skins. The pre-punched holes in the skin aren't evenly spaced, which makes it even more of a head scratcher. After a lot of trial and error, we finally figured out how to place and cut the stiffeners so that they all work out. Each stiffener gets cut (have to do so from the correct side to make it work out right!) according to marks Van's puts in the angle. We marked, cut, sanded, and deburred the stiffeners and clecoed to the skins.
