John’s RV-10 N798HJ

I am now finished with the tail cone and have started the work to assemble all the tail parts.  I had my father in law help me rivet the rest of the tail cone together (I was on the inside).  Today I began assembly of the empennage.  All is fitting together well.  I am learning quickly how to remove and replace bolts between the elevators and the HS.  The HS trailing edges line up almost perfect, but one trim tab has a 1/4 inch warp in it.  I might have to replace that before I am finished with the plane, but can wait for now.  I need to hurry up and finish the assembly so that I can move the prats to my parents house and Heather can get her car back in the garage.

The main reason behind todays post is I finally got the wife out in the garage to help me rivet and she did great.  Yes I am wearing my flying headphones to rivet, but I needed to let Heather use my hearing protection.  I hope that Heather and I can finish the other side tomorrow.  Heather turns out to be great at riveting and I think she secretly enjoys it.  We will have to see how much I can get her to help in the future.

So today I had fellow RV-10 Builder Tim Nash come over and help me buck some rivets on the bottom of the tail cone. We got all the stiffeners in and then went to the local airport (KJYO) and took a Warrior out for .8 hours.  I have not flown since I got my instrument rating and wanted to put some air beneath me.  Once Tim gets his BFR done I can put on the foggles and maintain my IFR cert.  I hope to call on another RV builder tomorrow so I can finish up all the two person rivets this weekend.  I am also getting ready to order the wings.  I am trying to time it right so that I can get my honey do list done before they arrive and I know once they are here I will be working on them and nothing else.  Work has been a bear lately driving to Baltimore for meetings all the time, but that is putting more money in my pockets for the plane so can’t complain to much.  We will see what this week brings and maybe I will have another post that shows a completed tail cone.

So I am now working on the tail cone.  It is a lot bigger than I thought it would be (or my garage is smaller than I thought.)  I hope to have it all riveted together in the next week or two depending on if I can find help bucking or not.  Then I will order the wing kit and start to assemble all the tail pieces for a picture before I ship the pieces off to my parents house.  I have not been working on the plane much over the last two weeks as I have been working mad hours and driving to Baltimore.  I also need to find time to go flying again as I need to do some instrument approaches to keep my license valid.  Building, flying and finding time to ride my bike is getting harder, especially with the kids in sports and stuff.  Well as they say, time to pound those rivets.

So it has been a while since I posted last. I am now almost done the elevators and started the tail cone. For those considering building an RV-10 I would recommend when ordering the tail kit go a head and order an extra set or two of parts for the trim tabs. This way when you mess up the first one, then the second one you can quickly learn from your mistakes and try a third time. I am still not as happy as I would like to be with mine. If I were to do them over again I would do some things in a little different order. I would prime them before putting them in the brake. I would bend the bottom of the skin up before bending the sides closed and I would not use the triangle over triangle method to fold the edges. The problem I found was when bending the first side of the edge all looked great, but when bending the top of the skin you can not get the blocks as close to the bend line as you could on the first side. This causes the sides to not be square and makes the holes real close to the bends. Overall trim tabs sucked. Keep pounding those rivets.

So today Richard Koehler came by to look over my work. He is a technical adviser from EAA chapter 168. He spent his time inspecting my vertical stabilizer, horizontal stabilizer and rudder. We also spent a lot of time talking about engine choices. While this may be premature I am glad we did. After talking with Dick I have decided to buy a used engine that is about at its overhaul limit and then overhaul the engine with Dicks help. This way I get a engine that is to new standards and get to learn all about the engine. Kills two birds with one stone.
I have also been working on the elevators. I spent the better part of this weekend match drilling them and decided to make a little video of it. I hope to actually create useful videos in the future, but this is all I have for now.{RV-10 Videos}

Tonight I put the last rivets in to the horizontal stabilizer. It is awesome to see the pieces come together and form something that big. My hands are a little scrapped up and sore from pounding the rivets, but I feel great. I hope to have an EAA Technical Counselor come out and check my work in the next few days. I am anxious to see what he thinks of what I have done so far. When I look at my vertical stabilizer and how much better my HS looks I know how far I have come in this build.

So I am excited to have the second piece of the plane complete. The rudder came out great and the rudder trim looks real good. I know some will complain about the rudder trim cable fairing not being parallel to the ground, but I made a decision and I am happy with it and like the way it looks. The rudder is VERY straight thanks to the help of Tim Nash (builder #40478) and his workshop. I hope to be able to spend some time working on the horizontal stabilizer tomorrow and finish it up. I do not look forward to the elevators so much, but the tail cone is coming up and I am very excited about that. I am also considering getting the quick build wings (they are like 95% complete) because of the time they take and how much of that time requires a helper to rivet. We will see how that goes.