All of the long thin pieces here are stiffeners. There is a pile of them. You put them in their slots, put the skin on, then match drill from the skin to the stiffeners. There's a hole every 1.25" or so. So yes this is a TON of drilling.
Here you can see the stiffeners have been drilled on the bottom skins, the side skin stiffeners have about 1 in every 10 holes. I do this to get the position of the stiffener correct. Then you can mostly just go nuts, only worrying about drilling straight.
Here's a nasty little lesson learned. I have a big assortment of cheap drill bits I got from Menards. Plans called for initially drilling the longerons holes to 3/32, not the usual #40 bit. 3/32 is a tiny bit smaller. The reason is because the top skins end up overlapping these holes, so you final drill them later on.
Anyway I used one of those cheapie bits, and paid for it. The tip of the bit broke off just as it was breaking thru to the back side of the longeron. Took some messin', but I got it out. No more cheap shitty bits!
Little buddy practicing writing his name while Dad works on the aft end.
I thought I had a good pile of clecos. By the time you put the top skins on, its not enough, guaranteed!
My building partner
First assembly mostly complete.
I've taken a small departure to prepare for some things I want to mount in the tailcone. One is an oxygen bottle, other is the ADAHRS tray.
ADAHRS stands for Air Data Attitude Heading Reference System. Its a sensitive little box that senses how fast your going, altitude, heading, pitch, roll and yaw. They are not to the caliber of the Inertial Reference Units we put in the big jets, but still pretty darn accurate. And for flying in clouds, they are critical to safety. They have to be mounted away from ferrous metals because they have a compass. So the top of the tailcone is a good place.
Another RV-10 builder Justin has some awesome plans for a shelf you put in the top of the cone. Saved me a lot of time. I had all the material laying around from scraps EXCEPT for the angle aluminum. Had one chunk of .063 3/4 x 3/4 , but it was only long enough for one side. Luckily my buddy Mike had a 4" piece to spare.
One last thing. I had to buy a 12" long #12 drill to get two of the aft deck to longeron holes. Wasn't in any of the tool lists I've seen.
