First Skin On

Finally got a skin on the horizontal stabilizer. Here's a shot of the left half of the stab showing some of the ribs before the clecos go in. This isn't the final assembly but an intermediate step to align and match drill the holes where the rivets go. The skin will come off to be deburred and dimpled before being reassembled for final riveting. The protective blue plastic will be removed before final assembly.

Here's the skin buttoned up with clecos. Clecos are temporary fasteners that hold things together in alignment during assembly. Paula got me the yellow boots for the clecos to protect the skins. It was encouraging to see something starting to look like an airplane part and not just some aluminum scraps.