Rudder 

	20 Aug 2002	Finally started on the rudder. So far, so good. No major disasters. Here are the right rudder skin stiffeners being match drilled to the skin. All the holes are pre-punched so all one needs to do is match drill. Oh, the stiffeners also come pre-punched in 3' lengths. There are punches used for guiding the trim cuts. It appears that left skin stiffeners are rotated about the fore/aft axis 180 degrees.
	21 Aug 2002	The rudder bottom is fitted here in this picture. There's a bunch of parts but nothing difficult here.
	21 Aug 2002	This is really the more difficult part of the rudder. The trailing edge wedge has to be counter-sunk and the part is somewhat thin to begin with. I ended up match drilling to an old door (hummm, saved the old doors from recent kitchen renovation...) and cleco'd the wedge to the door. Even if the countersink is kept to the minimum depth, the holes will enlarge slightly (you have to c/sink both sides), so the match holes in the door serve as a guide for the countersink to prevent chattering.
	21 Aug 2002	Skin in the process of match drilling with the rudder frames as well as the fitting of the lower fiberglass fairing backing.
	4 Sep 2002	After a week or so off, it's back to the project. Lots of rudder parts hung out to dry and ready for priming.
	8 Sep 2002	Skins back riveted.
	9 Sep 2002	Finally the rudder goes together. The brace will require four blind rivets which are now on order. Just can't get to those with a bucking bar. The lower shows the right skin cleco'd and the balance skin riveted on.
	10 Sep 2002	Time to accomplish the trailing edge bonding. Plans call for using Proseal but I didn't have any on hand. What I did have on hand was some Systems Three T-88 (formerly Chemtech T-88) epoxy structural adhesive. As Elwood said in The Blues Brothers, "This is glue. Strong stuff!"  I mixed up a small batch then cleco'd the TE down to the angle. I figured the clecos may get involved with the epoxy adhesive so I stuck each one in Boelube prior to inserting into the trailing edge. All came out with minimal adhesive stuck to them. Note hole cut in table to accommodate the rudder horns.
	11 Sep 2002	Top Picture: The white residue is what's left of the Boelube. A good wipe-down with some PPG epoxy primer reducer cleaned up most of the mess. Then run a deburring tool one turn in each dimple, and everything is ready for riveting. Second Picture: This shows the TE all ready for riveting. Now to figure out this double-flush riveting.
	11 Sep 2002	Basically the process was fairly straight forward although much patience is advised. Go slowwwwww. Per the manual, hit about every tenth rivet and only set about half way, shooting straight down on the rivet. Alternate rivets until all are done and continually check for TE straightness. Next is where I deviated from plans. I ground down a squeezer set so when a squeezer is compressed, the dies lay flush on the TE. I then used a pneumatic squeezer to slowly squeeze all rivets, alternating rivets to keep the edge straight. If you use a pneumatic squeezer, apply air very slowly to avoid distorting the edge.  Picture at left shows the finished state. Manufactured head is very flush with surface, but the shop heads do protrude and do not completely fill the dimples. I ended up with some very slight pillowing between a couple rivets, but otherwise a very straight rudder.
	12 Sep 2002	Finally, pretty much done with the rudder. Ran some blind rivets for several of the aft-most skin rivets on the ribs, bent the leading edge and blind riveted that as well, and installed the hinge bearings. All seems to have come out OK and the rudder moves with no friction. Only thing left is the fiberglass work. Total time on the rudder is now 30.5 hours with 91.5 total time on the kit.
	15 Sep 2002	I was aligning the rudder bearings with the vertical stab when I figured that it was advantageous to fit  the fairings at this time. The parts were together anyway so why wait.
	16 Sep 2002	I used West System to lay up a couple layers of glass on a 1/4 inch foam sheet. This was used to make the plug for the VS tip fairing. The rudder is already closed but will need some filler.
	17 Sep 2002	Here' s what the epoxy fiberglass plug looks like when installed. The lay-up at the top of the tip is a filler to achieve a nice smooth line around the entire VS/ rudder tip.
	22 Sep 2002	While I was waiting on the tip to cure, I started the lower rudder fairing. The plan here is to use #6 screws and tinnerman counter-sunk washers and allow the lower fairing to be removed for maintenance of the tail light and wiring.  I cut U-shaped channel in the fairing to accommodate the rudder horn which will be filled with a piece of fiberglass later. The RV-9 demonstrator has the gap left the way it is and is hardly noticed. This seemed a lot easier than removing the forward nose of the fairing and then re-attaching when the fairing was fitted over the horn.
	29 Sep 2002	Well not really RV related, Carolina and I took a long weekend to Maui. Nice to throw in some quality time....Lots of sun and foofy bar drinks. Got to keep things in perspective!
	3 Oct 2002	Finally got the rudder and VS tips in decent shape. They're not quite finished but very close. I'll deal with these at a later date, probably when it's close to painting the exterior. I only spent about 31.3 hours on the rudder, but it took another 13 hours just for the tips and lower rudder fairing. This fiberglass sure takes some time. On to the elevators...