Panther Sport Aircraft Forums

Thanks for your replies, Bob and Brent. It looks like both options offer a workable solution. The stiffener is already riveted to the spar so there may be some interference concerns when setting the dies should I go with flush head rivets.

Addendum: I borrowed a squeezer and dies from an RV-12 builder and a half hour later the lower half of the hinge now has flush rivets. Easy as pie. I will say that the proud stems are a real pain in the caboose when pulling flush rivets, which makes me happy that I'm using the domed rivet option for my Panther.

Hi Ron,
I used flush rivet on my build, but to answer your question, Yes you will need to dimple and flush rivet this area so vertical spar will slide in between fuselage side skins. Remember to dimple vertical spar before riveting the vertical stiffener in place.

Ron, I used dome head rivets the entire length of rear spar to fasten the vertical skin. The fuselage skin had no problem conforming to the vertical spar of the rudder. It might add a small bit of cosmetic ease to use countersunk rivet in your illustrated area. The left side does hold the piano hinge on and thus the countersink process may add additional work to the installation.

I think I'm on the right track here and if this has already been asked and answered please accept my apologies for being redundant. I'm one of those odd-ball builders who is using domed head rivets to build the Panther. Preparing to rivet the skins on to the Vertical Stabilizer I began to wonder if I should perhaps use countersunk/flush rivets on the lower portion of the rear spar so as not to cause the rear fuselage skin along the port side to stand proud. Has anyone using domed rivets run into this problem? I'm thinking using the flush head rivets is the more correct method but have not found any documentation on the plans indicating this.