Here are the basic guts of the rudder not counting various hardware pieces. The rudder is approximately 4' long.
Here the ribs have been temporarily cleco'd (fastened) in their proper places. It's hard to see in this picture but the end caps have been drilled and positioned already. The end caps will hold the control horn and provide hinge points to attach it to the vertical stabilizer (fin).
Here are two of the ribs close up. The dimples in the one rib correspond with dimples in the skin at the top of the rudder. These are for counter-sunk rivets. A fiberglass cap will be placed over this end.
A close-up of the top. It's important to keep lots of clecos in the assembly as you do the different assembly jobs. Believe me, I already learned that when I rebuilt the fin-twice!
Okay. Now I've built the entire rudder and this is what it looks like prior to disassembling it for epoxy chromate primer. Pretty, huh?
Ribs are riveted to the spar and so are the end caps and control horn. Everything's primed and ready to put together.
Yep, you guessed it. Putting it all back together again before riveting. You get really good at knowing where everything goes! This is important because our Rebel is in the homebuilt class. This means that we are legally allowed to perform maintenance on it as needed. This only goes for the original builder; if we were to sell it, the new owner would have to follow the rules for standard aircraft, i.e. a licensed A&P would have to do all work, not a bad thing at all. We'll be using one from time to time I'm sure.
