Today I took the rudder stiffeners that I cut up yesterday and clecoed them to the rudder skins. All the holes were final drilled, and the stiffeners were taken back off. The rest of the time was spent on the stiffeners for the left skin. Deburring edges, holes, scotchbriting all the cut edges and polishing down the holes that marked the cut lines. They all look good now and just need dimples and primer to be ready for final assembly on the skin. So I'm guessing it'll be another two hours or so to finish these up (minus priming) and do it all to the right stiffeners.
A couple other notes today. Vans never got back to me on the emails I sent over the weekend. I called Monday and they said, "we get a lot of emails over the weekend, we'll get back to you my tomorrow". I called Wednesday at about 3:30 PST and the guy said, "I can't access support emails right now, but I'll have them check and call you in the morning". Nothing in the morning, so I called this afternoon and the guy said he didn't know what was going on, but I explained my problems to him (defective skin and the 3 parts I screwed up) and he said they'd take care of it. So we'll see what happens with this..
I've been looking for Sherwin Williams primer and have talked to a guy at colortonepaint in San Antonio. He seems to have good prices, but he's one of those guys that doesn't seem to respond to email. Oh well. I'll call tomorrow and see what's up. I'm hoping that he carries metal prep chemicals and is open on the weekend, but I'm not counting on it. It looks like the cheapest place for Alumiprep and Alodine is Spruce but I'll have to pay the hazmat shipping charges, so I'll have to buy at least 2 gallons of each to make it worth my while. I'll probably use it, so no big deal I guess.
I sent an email to Experimental Aero about the DRDT-2. The bummer is that the next batch won't be ready until 2/28, but the good thing is that this guy reponded back QUICKLY. Which is a welcome surprise compared to several of the businesses I've dealt with recently. You'd think that if you want to pay somebody money for something, the least they could do is respond to email inquiries. Avery has been pretty good about this, but even then it sometimes takes a while to hear back and has taken a couple requests a time or two.
