With the Horizontal Stabilizer completed, I cleaned up the shop, and took part of the tables for the long stabilizer down.  The shop had gotten pretty messy over the course of building the horizontal stabilizer, with the long table taking up most of the shop, it was difficult to get access to some areas to sweep, etc.  I still need to find a suitable place to store the HS.  Right now it is in the shop storage, but I worry about damage, and efficient use of space.  I am thinking I will build a shelf to keep it in the garage, If I am very careful I may be able to get it into my office to hang on a wall there.

During some downtime on the HS, I had begun preparing the E-1008A/B Rib half's, so I dove right into deburring those, drilling, and prepping the E-1022 Shear clips.  After that I got to do my first real session of fluting on the Elevator tip ribs.  I used a metal straight edge as my guide, and found the whole fluting process to be pretty easy.

Next the elevator skins were prepped by removing the blue plastic where needed, and bending the close out tabs where the trailing edge of the elevator transitions to the trim tabs.

The Fore and aft spars were prepped, drilling hinge reinforcement plates where needed before proceeding to assemble the bottom skins, ribs, and fore and aft spars.  Once the bottom skin is attached the trim access reinforcement plate is clecod in place and drilled to the skin.  With the reinforcement plate in place, the top skins can be attached and clecod into place.

With the skeleton assembled the close out tabs are match drilled, and the elevator horns are match drilled.  I started match drilling the skins by starting in the middle of the fore and aft spars, clecoing every whole as I worked my way to the ends.  Both fore and aft spars were drilled completely before I moved on to drilling the ribs to the skin.  Repeat for Left and right, top and bottom.   A whole lot of drilling, and a whole lot of clecos.

The empennage kit comes with two WD-415 brackets which are basically a nut welded to a small piece of steal plate.  This bracket is to be attached to the cover plates to act as the anchor for the trim cable.  The plans are not very specific on measurements to attach these to the plate, but I did my best and drilled the plates to the trim access.  Next, I started running into a little trouble.  The plans on page 9-7 Step 5 say to dimple the cover plate and reinforcement plate for the K1100-06 nutplates and AN507-6R6 screws.  My problem was that it did not say if the access plate should be drilled, and my dimple dies did not fit in the pre-punched hole.  I had already put a ding in one of the access plates, while I was deburring, so I decided to go ahead and try and dimple it anyway.  Well, as I should have known, it cracked.  I drilled another one of the holes out, which resulted in a better dimple with the #6 die, but it seems pretty deep for the screw. 

I called Van's builder support, and they said to dimple with a 1/8" die, and see if it was a little better.   I plan to experiment with the botched plate, to determine the best fitting technique.  I ordered two cover plates, and some pro seal for the foam ribs, and trailing edges that are coming up.  I also ordered from Rivethead Aero a set of CNC machined replacements for the WD-415 brackets.

I like these a lot better, I believe the ones available from Cleaveland tool, are the same.  I will have to hold off on completing 9-7 Step 5 and 6 until the parts arrive.  I will procede with Step 7, and begin disassembling both left and right rudder assemblies.