After setting the rivets associated with the nose rib, the next steps are to rivet the rear middle rib to the spar and nose rib and rivet the tip rib to the spar as well. Only five rivets in total but a lot of time in setup, thought and figuring out if everything was alligned. Since there are three parts that have to have all their holes aligned, I took my time (and took it apart several times) to make sure everything was lined up. Undoing a mistake here would be very time consuming so better to get it right the first time.

First task was to attach HS-708 to HS-702 and 707. Due to the positioning of this intersection of parts, the only option is to use blind rivets instead, in this case LP-4's to secure the parts to one another. Blind rivets (up until this point) have been easy to use, just grab the stem with the rivet puller, give it a couple squeezes, and the rivet sets with the stem being sheered off at the head of the rivet. So even though the space was tight, the first one set normally. However the next two (the outside ones) both snapped the stems off about mid way instead of at the head of the rivet like they're supposed to do. Dammit!!!! This hasn't happened to me before so I wasn't completely sure what to do. I consulted section 5 in the plans, nothing in there, consulted my aircraft maintenance handbook, still nothing in there. So finally ended up searching on VAF and found the answer. Apparently this is not uncommon and can be anything from defective blind rivets to a bad or old puller or even just the angle at which the puller is held. There was even one poor fella that tried four different hand pullers and was still breaking the stems off. So a slight sigh of relief and I got up this morning and just cut them off and grinded them down using a Dremel tool. I'm confident they are set properly as the stem broke off at exactly the right amount of tension and right amount of squeezes, they just didn't break off where they were supposed to and I'm fairly certain the tight confines of this area and a slightly off angle pull is what caused this since the first one (the middle one) set like it should. I did manage to scratch up my parts a bit so I used a quick shot of primer in a cup and a Q-tip to clean up the scratches.

With that done I just needed to set two solid rivets to join the tip rib to the front spar. I looked at it and figured out a way to get my hand squeezer in there since that's the method I prefer. However after squeezing the first one slightly I realized the contortion that was required to squeeze the rivet was most likely going to result in a bad rivet. So I switched mid stream to the rivet gun and set both rivets that way. I should have just done this to begin with. Still a bit gun shy with the rivet gun but I'm getting better.

With those tasks completed it was time to construct a new cradle to hold the full horizontal stabilizer as it won't be too much longer until both skins are on the structure and I need a full cradle to hold the entire structure. I've made a few of these previously, one to hold the rudder and another to hold each half of the HS so this one went together pretty quickly and is the best one I'm made yet! Test fit and placed into action!

Next steps are to start riveting the skin to the forward spar and HS-708. That's going to be quite a bit of riveting and I want to do some research as to the best order to attack this section. I'm also close to having it ready for another visit from a tech counselor so I'm planning ahead a little to see how much I should complete so that there is enough access to give it a good look over.