Asssembling the horizontal stabilizer – Part 4

Kelly left town today, so I spent most of the day working. First up: rivet the HS nose ribs to the skins–a huge pain. A little searching online revealed that this is widely regarded as one of the more difficult places to rivet. After a few drilled-out rivets, I got the hang of it. With the forwardmost rivets, I ended up substituting MK-319-BS blind rivets, which apparently isn’t uncommon. I even heard of one instance where someone used *all* blind rivets for the nose rib to skin attachment.

Here’s what the skins and forward spar assembly looked like before attaching the two (the next step):

After the unpleasantness of the nose ribs was over, I dropped the forward spar assembly into the skins and clecoed it in–really starting to look like the complete part! I started riveting the forward spar to the nose ribs before ending the day.