Vertical Stab spars and ribs

Here's the first gotcha of the plans.  The nose ribs stick out too far at the front edges, so you need to sand them down in order to not make outward dents in the skin.  I knew this ahead of time by looking at other blogs, and went after them with 120 grit sand paper.  I didn't do it enough though.  My skins got dented slightly, but after disassembly the dents shrunk somewhat.  So then I used the fluting pliers to shrink them some more.  Hopefully that works, haven't reassembled yet.

Once you get all the parts edge-deburred, you assemble them for the first time.  Here's the guts of the vertical stab:

Now that the spars and ribs are assembled, you put the skin on and match-drill.  The parts all have this blue vinyl stuff that protects them during shipping.  You pull that off.  On the exterior surfaces I cut it just around the rivet holes to leave some protection from scratching.  Some say this is overkill because it all gets scratched up as part of paint preparation anyway, but I still do it.

Vertical Stabilizer start

They start you out by cutting stiffeners for the VS rear spar.  TONS of drilling, deburring.  I'm quickly getting used to that.

Here the rear spar is a little more assembled with the rudder attachment plates (6 white pieces) on.  Stuck here until I get the missing piece from Van's.  Used the waiting time to debur the front spar and ribs.  About 4 hours of work just edge deburring those pieces.  Maybe I'm being too finicky?

Tail kit delivery

A semi wouldn't fit down my road so I picked up the big box in my truck:

There was 7 pages of inventory, and its important to go thru every item and make sure its accounted for.  I found 4 things missing, Vans says they are in the mail.  One of which was a piece I need on page 1 of the instructions, figures.

Here's some of the stuff I unpacked.  A TON of hardware and rivets:

Ribs, fiberglass fairings, random stuff:

A boatload of skins.  These are huge:

Practice kits

I've got enough tools to be dangerous now, so I ordered both of Van's practice kits.  These let you practice the fundamental airplane construction skills before actually tackling something that will fly.

Here is the toolbox kit.  They leave the blue plastic on all the aluminum sheet from the factory to protect it.

It probably took me 5 hours or so.  Lots of deburring, drilling, dimpling, and riveting.  Pretty much love my pneumatic squeezer already, not sure how folks get along without them. That page you see is all of the instructions for that 5 hours of work, it fits on 1 page.

Here is the finished product.

It came with a cool sticker to put on when your done, but I couldn't help myself, had to go on the big box:

Here is the mostly-finished airfoil.  Figured I would hold off bending the leading edge and riveting the trailing edge so I can practice on that just before I do it on the real airplane surfaces.

And a line of back-riveted stiffners.  Back riveting leaves some awesome flush rivets behind.