Finished most of the work on the VS 3 hours, total 9 hours so far

As expected Easter Sunday was spent enjoying time with family and friends, but an hour in the morning and 2 in the evening got me a completely clecoed VS.
I drilled, dimpled, countersunk and riveted the rivuts, rounded, deburred and fluted the ribs and test fit the skins.
All that's left is to rivet which will have to wait until I get the replacement parts.
Meanwhile, this week if I get time, I'll try priming and final rivet the rudder hinges.

Clecoed VS frame

My first rivets

It all fits together nicely

First day of real work 3 more hours Total 6 hours so far

Well Saturday turned out to be a busy day finishing stuff around the house, trips to the dump etc. so I didn't get started with the build until the evening.
I managed to get all the parts laid out for the Vertical Stabilizer (VS) then spent a few hours match drilling, final drilling and deburring as directed in the plans.

Here we are all ready to start building: plans open, cup of tea at the ready :)

So, first day, first mistake, I had the lower spar doublers the wrong way around and match drilled the first holes in the wrong place, DOH !
oh well,  at least I learned how to order replacement parts from Vans ! (super easy thank goodness)
I'll have to wait to rivet all this together until I get the replacement parts, hopefully they will arrive in time for next weekend.

Here's the VS Spar clecoed together with the doublers in the correct orientation !

I didn't rivet the rudder hinges yet, because I'm still figuring out what I'm doing about priming.
Tomorrow (Easter Sunday) if I get time, I'll move along in the plans and see how far I can get without the rear spar riveted.

First Kit Arrived

Yesterday the tool kit arrived from planetools and the empennage kit from Vans !
Lots of opening boxes just like Christmas !

The Walter Aircraft Manufacturing Facility:

I did the inventory of the tool kit and found just one missing item: the tap set T handles, no big deal, planetools said they were on backorder and will ship today.

The Empennage kit had no missing or damaged parts that I could find, Vans did a great job, the inventory was very clear and easy to follow. Everything came out of the crate easily with just myself, except the skins that were tucked into the main VS skin, which needed a helping hand from Janine to avoid bending anything.

Kit arrives:

Starting inventory:

Inventory completed (3 hours):

All the small parts neatly stored (I added labels after taking the photo):

Decorating the workplace with a little help from Chloe:

That's a LOT of rivets:

And that's not all of them !

Hey look I finished the VS and painted it blue !

So that's the first 3 hours on the build hobbs.
I'll now spend some time reading all the plans, playing with all the new tools and doing some test rivets with scrap etc.
I probably won't start any actual work until the weekend, and it's Easter weekend, so I'll be busy with family stuff on Sunday at least, so hope to get one good days worth of work on Saturday.

Just got my kit# from vans 120528 !
The kit should ship in a couple of days.
I don't know when the tool kit will be here, but Amazon is delivering my new bench tools today.
I'll post photos when it all gets here.

First post

Well here we go; I've decided to build a Vans RV-12 light sport (E-LSA) aircraft in my garage.
I have almost no metalwork skills at this point, but learning is half the fun of this project and I've been wanting to do this for a long time now, as long as I've been flying in fact.

I spent a long time (years!) deciding which kit to build, there's many great kits out there, but what drew me to the Vans aircraft firstly; is the quantity and quality of the help available from other past and current builders,
secondly the flying qualities of the Vans aircraft are second to none, and lastly the RV-12 in particular was chosen because of the ease of construction (mostly pop rivets) and because I want something that I can retire into when I no longer want the hassle of getting my class 3 medical.

So earlier today I faxed the order form to Vans for the first kit (empennage)  and a bunch of orders for various tools from Amazon, Plane tools, Avery, The Yard Store and Cleveland.

I bought a kit specifically designed for building the RV-12 from Plane tools, and supplemented that with some pneumatic tools (air drill, grinders, squeezers, and rivet puller) from Clevelend and Avery.
Amazon will be delivering some long needed bench tools, grinder and drill press.

Next task: clean out the garage and prepare for all that lot to be delivered !