This page was made from an email I sent to some guys who asked me, when I returned from the Alexander Technical Center (ATC), what I thought of it.  This is what I replied:

11/21/02

I just got back this morning (Wed) from doing the “Build Your Tail” program at Alexander technical Center (ATC) in Griffin, GA.  I have very mixed feelings about the experience.  I had planned to spend some time sorting out how I felt about it overall before writing about it, but perhaps this is a start.  Actually, I had emails from 3 guys when I got back, all asking about the same thing.  So, I will try to put my thoughts about it together to all of you at once here.  It might take me awhile to finish this email, because I need to sort out my conflicting feelings about the program.

On the plus side, you DO get your tail built in a week.  One benefit of the Alexander builder’s program (as opposed to any other Builder’s Assistance Program) is that you can stay right there in the hangar, in a simple, but clean and adequate, room for only $20/night.  The “Build Your Tail” program is a good one.  You will get your entire tail built in only a week, and you will learn plenty about building it and the techniques to use for the rest of your plane.  You will get good help from guys who have built dozens of RV tails.  Especially if you are getting a QB wings and/or fuselage, I think the tail will be the most “building” part of your project.  At least that’s my impression so far, having done the tail, but not the QB wings/fuselage yet.  The instructors work very hard to help out, at LEAST 10 hours a day.  If anything, I’d say some of the help I saw might occasionally hinge on what the FAA might consider too much help (i.e. actually doing some of the work).  The program is smooth and well thought out.  The sequence is somewhat different than what is laid out in the Van’s manual.  IMHO, it is a quicker, more efficient, and more logical process.  Basically, you assemble everything one complete major component at a time, get it all primed, then put it all together at the end.  So, no riveting happens until about Friday.  One of the many things I learned there was that riveting with a gun is done as a last resort, only when squeezing can’t be done.  The instructors are of particularly good help with things like rivet bucking, leading and trailing edge forming, skin dimpling, etc.

On the negative side, let me first say that if you are a meticulous, perfectionist type of person, you will probably be as unhappy as I was with certain aspects of it.  Maybe you’ll want to attend anyway.  You have to make that decision.  In my (relatively inexperienced in aircraft sheet metal work) opinion, there is too much emphasis on getting it done quickly and just “good enough” so it “probably” won’t cause any future structural failures.  In my opinion, it seemed to be more on the “quick & dirty” side of quality.  I am not saying that their acceptable level of quality is BAD, I am saying that, IMHO, it could be better and less rushed.  I guess you have to rush if you want to get it done in 7 days.   Perhaps the best solution would just be for them to make it a 10 day program. 

Overall, their tools are of pretty decent variety, quality and quantity.  However, on the first day there, I was appalled at the condition of some of the tools, mainly metal cutting tools.  The drill bits were all dull.  When I was handed a very dull drill bit, I asked for a sharp one, and the instructor dug through a box of worn out old drill bits until he found one that looked reasonably sharp.  The drill bit situation was so bad that I went out to Aircraft Spruce (right there in Griffin) on the first lunch break and bought my own set of drill bits.  I wasn’t too happy with that; for all the money I paid them, they could have come up with a $5 new set of drill bits for each class.  But the dull ones were “good enough”, a concept I encountered frequently.  With dull drill bits, you don’t get clean holes or as round holes, and you get more burrs.  I also noticed that 3 out of 4 of their deburring cutters had badly chipped flutes and broken tips.  I made sure I got the good one, and the other 3 guys seemed perfectly happy with the ones they had.  I can’t imagine how those other cutters could have cut anything properly, but the other guys (and the instructors) used them all week without a complaint. 

They didn’t have any 3/16” (brass) clecoes, so for our AN3 bolt holes, we had to use 5/32 (black) ones.  Of course, they didn’t work properly.  Jeez, for the $1500 I paid to go there, couldn’t they have come up with $4 for a handful of 3/16 clecoes? 

I wouldn’t expect them to buy more $600 pneumatic squeezers, but I did have to wait a couple times to use their one $35 swivel rivet set.  They have a bandsaw, but it is useless; it has a wood blade in it with about 4 tpi.  I suggested they get a metal blade for it with plenty of teeth per inch.  They have a metal shear that worked well for me.  When I wanted to cut the optional lightening holes in the V-stab spar doubler (VS-808PP, DWG 6), what would have been a simple 10 minute job at home took about 2 hours because of their crappy, worn out hole cutters and the drill press with more spindle runout than any drill press I have ever seen.  

They have a HUGE back riveting plate, which was great.  What wasn’t so great was that they also use it for an anvil, table, and workbench.  The surface had a lot of crud, rust, significant dings, etc on it.  The night I did my first back riveting job, I spent about an hour working on the table first, filing the high spots smooth and just cleaning it up in general.   When you’re back riveting, you can’t see what part of the table you rivet head is sitting on, and I sure didn’t want my rivets or skin sitting on either a gouged depression or the typical bump around a gouge.  So, that was in much better condition when I left than when I came. 

They have a wide variety of hand squeezers, from all 3 major suppliers (Cleaveland, Avery, Tatco), so you get to try them all and see which ones you like the best.  I found that, even though I’d already gotten a pneumatic squeezer on ebay, I want at least one, if not 2, hand squeezers.  You need one for dimpling, and ATC recommends hand squeezing all skin rivets.  I didn’t try dimpling skins with a pneumatic.  I also found that my rivet heads sat in the dimpled hole better if I redimpled both the skin and the rib/spar together just before riveting.  Of course, this took more time, but I was very pleased with how the flush rivets sat after doing that.  So, I squeezed rivets with 2 squeezers; first I’d hit all the edge holes with the dimpler again, then I’d drop the rivets in and squeeze them. 

I also learned that, assuming you want your flush rivets to sit nice and flush, it’s better to err on the side of over dimpling than under dimpling.  Particularly when you are using the C-frame to dimple the thicker stabilizer skins, you really need to give that C-frame a good whack with the hammer to get a good dimple.  My first skin, the H-stab, took a lot of screwing around and countersinking the dimpled hole before the rivets would sit in well enough.  This is because the skins weren’t dimpled hard enough when they went through the C-frame the first time.  If I’d had more time, I would have run the whole skin through the C-frame again.  But I felt pretty rushed at that point, so we just countersank each dimpled hole.  I wasn’t too keen on cutting away the surface of the dimple, but the pressure was on to hurry up.  

They like to use the swivel deburring tool as a countersink.  There’s a reason a real countersink has a pilot; you will make things out of round if you try to countersink with a deburring tool.   That swivel deburring tool also has a tendency to wobble as you rotate it.

A couple more good ways lots of time is saved; the instructors help with dimpling the skins, so that goes pretty quickly.  It would take several times longer if you were trying to do that by yourself.  Same story with riveting with the gun; one instructor did all the bucking for everyone, and he was good at it and fast.  I don’t think anyone ended up with damaged skins from riveting errors, like you hear on the RV lists about people doing that at home.

I mentioned the optional lightening holes; they were not part of the “planned program”, and with that, as well as with the other metal prep things I wanted to do that I considered proper, they went along with it, but kind of acted like I was a dumb shit and a pain in the ass for wanting to do it.  They preached, and the other guys did, practically no metal prep.  I used to be an aircraft mechanic in the USAF, I took the EAA sheet metal course, I watched the Orndorff empennage video set several times, and I extensively studied the Van’s Preliminary Plans book before going to GA.  All of these places preached the importance of removing any scratch you can feel with your fingernail, and filing out and smoothing all milling marks on all edges.  I felt scoffed at for insisting on doing these things thoroughly to every piece.  During the first day or 2, the instructor would come up to me working, look at what I was doing, laugh, shake his head and walk away.  As you might imagine, this did not sit well with me, but I just kept plugging away at it.  I like to do things well and thoroughly, so I did the above-mentioned preparation before going to Griffin.  That seemed to work against me.  I don’t think the other guys did any prep, and they seemed to have an easier time of it; whatever they were told to do, they just did it without question.  I think most of them hadn’t even seen the “Preliminary Plans” book until they got there.  We didn’t open that book at all for the week. 

I worked through most lunches and suppers, and worked until about 0200 every night to keep approximately up with the others.  I put a lot of work and care into each piece before I deemed it ready for the paint shop.  One thing that I found irritating was that the instructors seemed to give the most help to the person(s) who were the furthest along.  It was irritating to see the furthest-along person working on one of his pieces and one or more instructors not just helping, but actually doing the work on one or more of another of that person’s pieces.  It was a mixed feeling, because on one hand I was always the one who was the least far along, and on the other hand I really preferred to do the work myself.  Perhaps they just sensed that and left me alone, except when I went to them to ask a question.  Perhaps another reason was that they didn’t want everyone to be at the same point at the same time, because then there’d be conflicts over use of certain tools, like pneumatic squeezers.   One example I wrote down on Thursday; for the guy furthest along, one instructor was essentially doing the work, while the student watched or helped some.  For the person who was second furthest along, another instructor was working on his skins while a third instructor was helping that student rivet.  On Saturday, all the instructors pitched in and worked late, working continuously for hours on stuff for the guy furthest along, so he could finish his empennage Saturday night.  On Sunday, two instructors were working on separate parts of a student’s tail, and the student wasn’t even there; I think he was at lunch.

The few times when one of the instructors did some work on one of my pieces, I was not satisfied with the quality, so it was best for all that I did all my own work anyway.  Here are some examples of that:

One instructor did most of the rivets on my V-stab main rib, while I was prepping a skin and stiffeners for back riveting. Then he left for lunch or something.   I wanted to use the back rivet plate/table it was sitting on for back riveting my stiffeners to the skins, so I started to finish up my piece he’d left there.  Then, I noticed that all the rivet shop heads he had done were undersize, so I had to resqueeze them all.  I guess they weren’t undersize by much, but they were undersize; the rivet gage slipped right over them.  That’s a good example of “proper” versus “good enough”. 

Another instructor who was a bit on the hyper side helped me out by (VERY quickly) deburring some pieces I was about to work on.  He did it very fast; about 1/10 the time I would have taken to do it.  But I had to redo them all because it was such a quick and sloppy job.  He overdid the rivet hole deburring, creating significant chamfers in the rivet holes, which of course I couldn’t fix.  He missed some of the holes entirely.  He did nothing at all to any of the side edges or lightening hole edges.  He did the most perfunctory scuffing, barely touching most of the surfaces and missing some completely.  He ignored all the scratches.   “Quality vs good-enough” again.   After that, I decided I really didn’t want much physical help; just guidance and answering questions.

One of the instructors is an A&P, and I never saw anything he did that I didn’t like.  He polished up my rudder stiffeners edges and made up all my elevator stiffeners for me, and I was grateful for the good help.

The primer painting was a bit sloppy, especially the pieces done Friday afternoon when the painter was apparently thinking mostly about leaving for the weekend.  Some pieces had areas with no paint at all, some had insufficient paint, and some had excessive coverage.  I think a couple pieces even had all 3 problems on the same piece.  I was the only one to send some pieces back to the paint shop for touchup.

When it was time to put the lead counterweights in my elevators (on the second Monday evening, one day over the 7 days), they explained to me how the weights and elevators were to go together, and I started working on one.  It fit too tight, as expected, so I was doing my usual careful job, pushing the lead in, seeing where it was binding, taking it out and filing it down some.  While I was busy with that, the more hyper instructor took the other elevator, and quickly hammered the weight in so tight that no amount of pounding with a hammer would take it back out.  “Good enough”.  Then I was told to chamfer the holes for a #10 screw.  I didn’t think that sounded right (chamfering a big hole like that in thin sheet metal), but it was getting late Monday, it was solid lead jammed tight behind the hole, and I was running out of time, so I uneasily went along with it.  They told me to chamfer it with a deburring tool.  Well, of course when you try to do a big hole like that with a deburring tool, your chamfer is going to be well out of round long before you get it done.  And it leaves very little sheet metal holding the screw.  I thought it should have been dimpled, but then that would have taken more time, and the lead was jammed in there so tight it would never come out again to cut a groove in it for the dimple.  So, I tried it as instructed and ended up with the expected screwed up chamfer.  I stopped and asked for a proper #10 countersink to try to do it right, as long as I had to countersink anyway.  They didn’t have an eight dollar #10 countersink, but they did manage to come up with a #8, so I used that to make the chamfer as round as I could.    Later, I noticed that the plans specifically said to dimple the sheet metal and chamfer the lead, which is what I wanted to do, but couldn’t because of being so rushed, and because the instructor had forced the lead in so tight it wouldn’t come out to be properly fitted.  “Quick and dirty” vs quality.  I just left the other elevator counterweight untouched, and decided to finish both properly at home. 

The day after I had completed my horizontal stabilizer, I noticed that I had missed 3 final things that needed to be done on it.  I took care of those items.  To avoid any repeats of that, toward the end of the week, I asked one of the instructors if he could inspect my completed pieces for completeness.  He seemed pretty disinterested, but said he would.  I don’t think it ever happened, so on the last day, I asked another one of the instructors to do it.  He blew it off as “not critical”.   I found out later that there were some more pop rivets missing from the aft H-stab.

One thing you might ask yourself is “do I really need this tail built in a week?”.  On one hand, the answer to that for me, and I imagine for most people, is “no”, because then we have to wait months for the rest of the kit anyway.  For example, you may have heard of Rick & Lori Threet.  They are the people who ordered the #1000 RV-7.  They ordered their tail about a week before I ordered mine.  They got theirs, got it finished and started on their wings before I even went to GA.  The other side of that coin is that the program teaches you a lot, gets your tail done so you can do something else while waiting for your wings & fuselage, gives you a feeling of accomplishment, leaves you knowing you can do the rest of it, and gets you quickly and smoothly over the process.  Some things that you might ponder or agonize over for hours or days can be answered by a quick question to the instructors.  Mistakes that are easy to make are avoided by the instructors telling you what to do and what to watch out for as you work on each sub-assembly.  You also save a lot of time not having to look up every detail in the plans.  These guys have built so many tails that they can just tell you off the top of their head what size rivet goes where, which way the pieces go together, which pieces are chamfered and which are dimpled in what direction, which holes to not rivet until later, etc.  It probably would have taken me months to complete on my own.  If you look at other builders’ web sites, most of them are taking at least a couple months to build their empennage.  It is nice to have it all done now.

One other little tidbit I picked up is that I had been under the impression that the RV-9 was somehow easier to build.  Not so!  The guy in the class building a 9 had to do a LOT of fabrication that the others did not.  Also, the RV-9 elevator surface skins come with the ends of the skins joined on the trailing edge, not the leading edge, as on the 7 & 8.  The trailing edge is much more difficult and critical to form properly than the leading edge is.  The leading edge is tucked into the H-stab, so on the 7 and 8, we just had to roll the edge and pop-rivet it together.  The rudder on all 3 requires the T/E fabrication, but the elevators are done quite differently.  I think the other 3 of us were glad we were not building a 9.

Speaking of the tricky task of doing trailing edges, that was another area of concern.  I knew from studying the Van’s manual all fall that they said doing the rudder trailing edge was one of the most critical parts of the entire tail.  They devoted about a page to instructions for doing it as straight as possible.  There is also a LOT of discussion on the RV7 list about how to do this correctly.  When I was ready to put my rudder together, I asked the instructor about the instructions in the book.  He got rather testy about it, and said I could do it the way Van’s said (and I’d be on my own with it) or I could do it his way.  He said the Pro-Seal recommended by Van’s took too long, and it was impossible to get it as straight as Van’s said to try to get it.  Well, I wasn’t about to head off into uncharted territory versus someone who had done dozens of them, so I went along with the program.  He did it his way, and I thought it came out pretty straight.

I should also mention that I re-watched the Orndorff videos after I got home, just to see how things compared, after having actually done it.  Watching the videos  again made me realize that they are not as valuable as I had thought.  Apparently, the kits are now much easier to build than when George did his videos.  So, a lot of the stuff he is showing is no longer pertinent in the new kits.  He spent a lot of time showing how to get the ribs properly aligned and drilled.  In his video, he is using a kit that does not have the ribs pre-punched.  In our kits, all the ribs are pre-punched, like everything else, so it all goes together much faster and easier than shown in his video.  It might still be of some value to someone, if they realize that they should ignore all the stuff about alignment, fixtures, drilling ribs, etc.  Also, I like the Alexander process flow and sequence better than George shows it.  Part of George’s process flow is probably due to having to do all that alignment and rib drilling on the older kits, though.

I live in NH, so I flew down to GA, and had to have the completed tail crated and shipped back to me.  The other 3 guys in the class were from AL, FL, and VA, so they each brought a pickup truck with which to take their tail back home.  One of the 3 (VA) had his tail crated for the trip; the other 2 didn’t.  Altogether, it was quite expensive for me, aside from the cost of the (rather expensive) ATC program.  It cost several hundred for the airfare, a couple hundred for the rental car, $150 for crating, and over $400 for shipping to NH.   I would definitely recommend taking a truck there, even if you have to rent one and/or travel a long way.  I am just praying that my box was packed carefully, and it arrives with contents undamaged.

So, would I recommend that you not attend this program?  No, I am not saying that.  Would I recommend that you take it?  Perhaps.  The other 3 guys who took this seemed to have none of the issues I did.  You have to decide if you can accept the conditions I’ve described.  The other 3 guys seemed to accept it all OK.  I am a real stickler for quality and taking the time to do things RIGHT.  Too much quality?  I don’t think so, but that’s just my biased opinion.  I learned a bunch of good stuff from each of the 3 instructors.  They made building my tail much quicker and easier.  After attending this program, I am completely confident that I can build the rest of the plane.

I came away from the EAA sheet metal class with enough knowledge to build the tail, but that was like high school and Griffin was college.  I did learn a lot more at Griffin; both general stuff for building the rest of the plane and many specific things that made the tail building much easier.  I could have done it with just the EAA class behind me, but I’m sure I’d have made some mistakes and spent a lot of time trying to find stuff in the plans.  All the info is there in the plans; it’s just hard to find sometimes. 

I hope this helps you in your decision process.  If you do attend Griffin, I’d be interested in hearing your take on what I have described.

12/10/02 

Since I came back, I have been reading the RV-7 Builders List, and I have gained a new appreciation for the help I got at Griffin.  Questions that people are agonizing for hours or days over on the list (and I would be too if I hadn't gone to Griffin) are either answered before they even become a question at Griffin, or they are answered immediately as soon as they came up.  Questions like where to put what rivets, which rivets to leave to last, how to do those last 4 rivets on the H-stab, trim tab & LT elevator end folds, etc were just not issues at all there, like they seem to be for folks on the RV7 list.

Another addendum I have is that I very strongly recommend NOT shipping your tail.  I did eventually get mine, and it was not damaged in any way, but the trucking company (Watkins) lost it for a week.  Then it took several calls a day for 2 more days to get them to find it.  Then they wanted to charge me over $800 COD for the shipping, when I was quoted $350, which I had thought was PLENTY.  ATC was very helpful in getting the COD issue resolved.  It did end up costing me $422.57, not the $361.20 from the quote from Watkins’ web site.  Lessons learned; expect to pay a bunch more if your shipment involves delivery to residential AND/OR if it is an interline shipment (meaning Watkins doesn’t service your area, so another, smaller carrier brings it to you).  Interline shipment also involves more handling and potential for damage, although my package did arrive without damage.  I would again recommend not shipping your tail, but taking it yourself. 

Another nice thing I liked about ATC was that they didn't have their hand out the minute I walked in the door.  They didn't even ask for final payment until the last day.

Well, that’s my take on my visit to ATC.

GOOD LUCK ON YOUR PROJECT!

brian

11/04 - Here is some feedback I received from someone who asked me my advice, then went to ATC:

Hi Brian,

Yes, I did go, and built my tail there. I had them ship it back. Jacob built an amazing crate for it, and there was not a scratch on the tail. Van's should get some training from Jacob on how to build crates.

They obviously listened to your suggestions, and bought lots of new stuff. We had new drill bits, and other goodies.  I stayed at the facility, and it was really convenient. There were four builders there, one guy was local, and three of us stayed in the rooms. Very nice.

It was rushed at times, but looking back, I can say that the experience was very positive. I know people that bought tails months ago, didn't get training, and are still not finished. Some have not even started, probably because they are afraid or overwhelmed by it all. The ATC gave me the confidence to dive into the rest of the kit. Worth the time and money, that's for sure!

Your comments about the facility really helped me a lot, because I was able to watch out for potential problems, and have a better idea of what to expect. Thanks a lot for sharing them with me!
 

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