On Thursday I received the replacement parts I ordered... $30 worth of parts, and that much again in SHIPPING.  And I picked a relatively slow shipping method... glad I didn't order overnight shipping!  Well, at least the parts are here in time for weekend work.

I measured the setbacks from the end of the HS-702 front spars and drilled the holes that would form a bend relief for the tabs.  The horizontal red lines are there as a reminder of the minimum edge distance required for the rivets that would go in the holes... in other words, "make sure you don't take off more material than what is outside that red line!"

 

The relief holes are drilled, the extra flange cut back, and the tabs bent six degrees to match the bend previously put on the spar stiffener bars.

The two HS-404 tip ribs require notches to be cut in them so the front flange will fit "over" the HS710 and HS714 angles.

I stared at this drawing for a long time... you have to mark on two ribs (the HS405 main rib and the HS404 tip rib) where the holes will be drilled on the front flanges of both ribs.   There is not enough information on any one rib to mark all the holes accurately... the dimensions only make sense when used in conjunction with each other, as a whole....

To make that work, I drew a line on a sheet of butcher paper, and used the tooling holes in both ribs to make sure they were properly center-aligned with each other.  In the photo below, you can see the blue centering line running right through the holes.

Then I could mark hole locations on the front flange of each rib, relative to each other.

A little bit later, the skeleton gets clecoed together for some final match drilling.

And then, do the instructions really say this?!  Yes!!!  I get to put a skin on!

Now THAT looks like a real airplane part...

A look inside the structure.

This is the left leading edge of the horizontal stabilizer (tail section).  Only about 10,000,000 rivets to go... (slight exaggeration).