(page 7-05) What a wonderful concept...                                  

....Spring break. No lectures to prepare and give, no papers to grade. In addition to the three main reasons for choosing teaching as a profession (June, July and August), all the other days off make it worth missing out on the money available outside academia. Finally, I can work on my airplane. I had finished the rudder skeleton yesterday, riveting the ribs to the spar. Then, clecoing the skin to the ribs went a lot smoother than the same operation with the vertical stab, which I expected since the ribs for the rudder are all the same length. All the holes lined up with very little coaxing.

Let me once again not miss an opportunity to

bitch about the time it takes to get the blue plastic off the large sheets of alclad.  I am not making this up:  30 minutes just for the rudder skin alone.  Next time I'll try heating it with heat gun.  I think if there were an easier way, however, I'd have read about it on the forums.

It was a great relief to get out the pneumatic rivet puller again.  I enjoy this so much more than squeezing the solid rivets.  I think the rivet puller supplied with the RV-12 tool kit from Isham could not be improved upon.

I started the anti-servo tab (more blue plastic hell).  It seems that this will be easier still.  The fuselage kit still sits in the crate.  I have 30 days to inventory the parts.  Problem is, I have no idea where I'll store the parts from the fuselage kit when I take them out for the inventory. 

The picture at left goes before the one above, of course.  I don't feel like taking the time to swap them.