Tail Cone Riveting Part #5

Got started today with riveting the bottom of the tail cone.

My uncle Al helped me with this.  He was outside driving while I was inside bucking.

Fairly straight forward riveting.  The aft most bulkheads required some weird positions and sometimes the rivets are hidden behind stiffeners which requires some bucking bar gymnastics.

My uncle has arthritis so we got my youngest daughter out there to help us put rivets in the holes after she got home from school.   This sped things up drastically!

All done!

I then riveted the aft side of the battery/bellcrank ribs to the bulkhead.  This is where I deviated from the plans and used the RV14 Yaw Damper mount which had to be modified.  I chose to use a nutplate here to make the damper mount removable and here it is all riveted to the assembly.

Final Tail Cone Priming

Primed the rest of the tail cone parts and the avionics shelves that I built.  Glad to that is over!  Priming = easy.......  Prep for primer = hard!

Yaw Damper Servo Mount

I ordered 200 more 3/32 cleco's from Vans.  Getting a few with each order so I can have plenty for the wings.  I now have ~1050ea 3/32 cleco's!

NOTE: The following is a spin off the plans and into experimental world.  Garmin makes an install kit for both the Pitch and the Yaw Damper servos.  Just buy them for a simple care-free install.

So I wanted to make sure I put in the provisions for the pitch servo and the yaw damper servo now while the tail cone is wide open and easy to work with.  The pitch servo bracket is a no brainer, bolt in place bracket I purchased from Van's.  The yaw damper servo mount kit I also purchased from Van's however it is designed for the RV-14 and not the RV-10.  The good news is that most of it fits right out of the gate.  The support bracket that ties the mount to the bulkhead is where things go off plans and must be dealt with....

To give context, here is what the assembly should look like when installed on a RV-14:

And here is how all the parts go together on a RV-14:

The problem is that the bracket does not align like that on the RV-10.  The bulkhead holes are pre-drilled in a different configuration which leaves things looking like this:

Photo by Parish Moffitt

Notice the holes in the top and bottom of the bracket do not align with the prepunched holes in the bulkhead.  Also notice the center hole is not concentric with the larger hole prepunched in the bracket.

To fix this I did something very similar to what Caleb Tennis posted he did on VAF with this post:

Caleb Tennis' Post

First I fabbed up these doubler plates that will sit on the aft faces of the brackets mount ears to cover that larger pre-drilled hole in the center of the bracket's ears.

 Next I noticed that when everything is cleco'ed into place, there is a pretty good sized gap between the bracket and the bulkhead.  I do not want to just force everything together so I will make a spacer for this issue.

 Next I match drilled the mounting ear doubler plates to the bracket's mounting ears.  Then I countersunk the fwd face of the holes to receive flush rivets because these will go against the spacer later.

 Next I squired on some rattle can primer on these parts because I need to go ahead and rivet these doublers to the bracket mounting ears.  No time to prime with AKZO!

Here are the doublers riveted to the bracket's mounting ears.

 Next I made a spacer out of 0.063" sheet.  I used the bracket as a template to mark and cut it out.
Then I match drilled the center hole of the bulkhead to the whole assembly using a long drill bit.  I clamped the whole assembly well before drilling.

 Next I punched this hole I just drilled up to a #12 to receive a #3 AN bolt.

 This is what I was after.  The ability to unbolt and remove this bracket in the future when I need to crawl into the tailcone.

 Those two bolts need a nutplate on the fwd side of the bulkhead.  I used my nutplate jig to get the job done.  Pilot side...

Co-pilot side...

I will need to countersink these holes for the nutplate mount rivets as I want them to go through the spacer and the bulkhead web.

I will install a nutplate on each side fwd of this bulkhead to receive the bolts.

I will need to dimple these bulkhead holes and install flush rivets on the aft side.  This is because the spacer will lay on top of this area.

Pretty good little task but I am very happy with how it turned out!   Thanks to Caleb Tennis for the ideas I stole from his post!

Rear Avionics Shelves Part Three

 For the ribs, I am making them out of the same 0.063 sheet.  I put a 3/4x3/4x1/16 angle at the top of the rib which will get nutplates so the shelf can be removable.  I also cut lightening holes in them using two different hole saws in the drill press.

 Each side gets two ribs.  They get match drilled and finally tied to the bottom skin J-stiffeners with pop rivets later.

I and angle to the ends of the ribs to prevent them from collapsing under weight.

 Here is the co-pilot's side all fab'ed up and cleco'ed in place.

 Rear view of the co-pilots side looking fwd.

 Next I started duplicating parts for the pilot's side.   It was a bit of a brain teaser to do this without messing up!  Here is the side skin translator assembly for the other side.

 Used the shelf deck plate to match drill all the holes in the opposite side plate.

 Added the angles front and back.

 Match drilled to the battery box and the skin translator assembly.

 Fabricated the opposite side ribs.

 Clamped everything in place and match drilled the ribs to the deck and to the bottom skin J-stiffeners.

Here they are all ready to have the screw holes punched out to #12 and the nutplates added after priming.  I likely won't pop rivet all the ribs and translators in until much later in the build.
Overall this took several hours but it will be worth it to have a nice secure place to mount avionics components down the road.  The entire assembly is very strong and would be fine to crawl on.

Rear Avionics Shelves Part Two

 More napkin CAD to explain what I am doing.

 And even more napkin CAD to explain it all.

 So here I am aligning the co-pilot side shelf with the exiting battery bracket and the side skin translation assembly I created.  It was a challenge to figure out how to position it all, hold it and then match drill it in place.

 Here I added 3/4x3/4x1/16 angle to the front and rear edges of the deck plate to stiffen it all up.

 Match drilled the deck plate to the side skin translation assembly.

 Added additional match drilled holes to the battery tray.

 Match drilled the side skin/ J Stringer translation assembly to the side skin J stringer.  These will get pop rivets eventually when final assembly is done.

Next I got started fabricating the ribs that will go under the deck plate and support the shelf by tying into the bottom skin J stiffeners.