Finished Right Rear Spar

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So on the scale from “no help at all” to “girlfriend built the plane all by herself,” we made a few steps last night.

After dinner (thanks Mi Pueblo!), I convinced the lady friend to come outside and help me finish up the last few rivets on the right rear spar.

I talked her through going to the plans, looking at the rivet callout legend, and then putting the rivet in the appropriate holes, making sure to avoid the “rivet later” holes.

We were planning on having her actually squeeze the rivets, but the AN470AD4-6s (and -8s) were too much. She ended up holding the spar steady for me and helping with rivet layout. (See, I told you it was a small step toward “girlfriend built the plane all by herself.”)

I’m working towards being able to call from a business trip across the country and tell her to do something offhand like, “Hey honey. Can you hang the engine for me tonight while I’m away? Great. Thanks. Bye!”

Here's the plans shot for the reinforcement fork.

Of course, we were too busy being in love (with each other and the airplane) to take very many pictures, so you just get the end result. The main squeeze did a great job reaching all of these rivets (mostly due to the 4″ no-hole yoke).

Final rivets in the fork-only area. 38 rivets here.

Closeup of the fork and doubler plate together.

Final rivets in the doubler plate. 7 more rivets here.

Finished product.

0.5 hours (thanks, girlfriend), and 45 perfect rivets.

For those of you paying attention to the totals, that brings me to 175 hours (after 261 days) and 2409 rivets (of an estimated 20,000). Still a long way to go.

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