Elevators

Got a chance to put the new hinge on my trimtab today. This time I moved it back a little further and the fit with the elevator edge is much better this time!

This is so cool :-) My hanging horizontal stab and elevators are featured on the home page of Vans Air Force. Thanks Doug! And thanks Mike for letting me know about this!

The empennage is finished! I first drilled the #40 pilot hole in the elevator horns using the McMaster drill bushing in the hinge bearing followed by drilling out those holes with a 1/4 inch drill bit.

Here are some pictures of the horizontal stabilizer and elevators all done.

After that me and my wife hung the structure back up on the wall where it will probably be until next year when the fuse will be done (looking forward to that moment!). Most of the fiberglass work still has to be done, but I leave that until later when the wings are done as well.

All in all the tail has taken me about 136.5 hours in 4.5 months, which is 12 hours more than the 125 hours I initially estimated. But then again I estimated that without having any experience building an airplane :-) I plan to finished the wings in 5 to 6 months, but definitely have to ramp up on the average number of hours per week I spent in the workshop.

Today the elevators were put on their horizontal stab hinges. This thing is huge when it's assembled!

First I cleared the space for the elevators counterweights. Had to take off a little bit more than an inch of material with my metal cutting shears and used files, emory roll and scotchbrite pads to make it nice.

I've read posts where people said that their elevator horns did not line up very well. Mine came out perfect!

Next step was making more room for the horns on the spar. I used a dremel cutting wheel on my air drill and shattered 4 of them on the process!

Notice the shattered pieces of cutting wheel...

Since the right elevator leading edge bend was not as good as the left elevator I had to bend it using a hammer and some scrap wood) a bit more inward to have enough clearance between the leading edge and the hor. stab. spar. Fits great now and the elevators move very smoothly. Tomorrow I have to decrease the diameter of the drill bushing a bit as it doesn't fit into the hinge bearing right now.

Left elevator is finished! Mike helped me bend the leading edge today. Definitely a much nicer bend than the right elevator. According to Mike, the right bend might be a bit too high and touching the stab. If that is the case I will have to see how that problem can be solved.

Here's Mike holding the elevator. Notice this jealous look in his eyes... ;-)

Only the fitting of the elevators on the horizontal stabilizer left (hopefully this weekend) and two weeks of waiting until the wing kit ships.

A historic moment tonight: my trim tab was moving by electrical force for the first time :-) That servo is a lot noisier than I thought it would be! Here is a movie of the moment (avi format):

trim-tab-moving.avi

To make this happen, I mounted the servo on the cover plate and had to file some of the sides of the platenuts to make it easier to shift the hole construction in.

And here you see the whole thing mounted including the clevises and cut-to-size metal rod.

Today I finished riveting the trim trab and left elevator.

The alignment of the trim tab trailing edge with the elevator trailing edge is a teany-weany bit off. I hope that's not too much a big deal, else I can always drill out the rivets from the trim tab hinge and redo that one. I'll see what other people say.

Finally the left elevator and trim tab together. Tomorrow it's time to start putting the servo structure together.

I went to Mike this morning to get his help with bending the trim tab (and I helped him with his tab). The replacement one came out so much better!

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In the afternoon back in my own workshop I finished the trim tab, riveted the bottom of the spar and started working on the hinge.

Riveted the trim tab horn on and put blind rivets in the bend trim tab ends.

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I put blind rivets in the bended parts on the left elevator.

And here is a picture of the left elevator and trim tab (not hinged on yet). I riveted the bottom side of the elevator and will do the top side probably tomorrow.

The replacement trim tab arrived with UPS today.

Let's see if I can do a better job bending the sides than the first one! For now I bended the trailing edge and got the blue stuff off at the right places.

The replacement trim tab will be arriving tomorrow, so today I have started to fit a fiberglass tip on the right elevator. After lots of sanding I ended up with quite a nice fit. Need to do some glass work on the leading edge where the counterweight is, but I'll do that later with all the tips at the same time.

Finally some time in the shop again after a week of lots of projects at work and some traveling (San Diego). I continued bending the trim tabs.

Unfortunately I had the wooden blocks too much inwards of the trim tab and I bend them too much. So much that one of the corners tore up (hard to see on the picture). I'll have to order a new trim tab from Vans; this will be my first replacement order!

I bended the elevator tabs too and these came out much nicer and are definitely acceptable.

Who's hand is that?

Made a wooden bending block and started on the trim tab bending. Wowee, this is pretty tough do it nicely. Tomorrow more hopefully.

Next to finishing the rudder, Abel and I did some work on the left elevator as well and started bending the elevator tabs. Also started to look at the trim servo and studied the drawings on how to mount it.

Finished bending the leading edge of the right elevator and screwed in the rod bearings. This is now done except for the fiberglass tip.

Doesn't look to bad for my first leading edge in the project. More edges to come soon!

Riveted the right elevator tonight.

Also started to bend the leading edge. What a pain! The small part took forever; two more pieces of the edge to go...

Presidents Day today so I spent most of the time in the workshop. Thanks for the time off Mr President!

Primed the elevator structure parts in my new paint tent

Right and left spar and ribs (703 and 704 riveted together)

Details of the hinge reinforcement plates on the spars (back and front)

Riveting the 703/704 rib pair to the spar was tough, but it worked out without problems

Riveted the elevator horns to the spars and root ribs

Sawed and filed the right counterweight down so that it will fit under the fiberglass cover later. Supposedly only the right weight has to be shaved off so much

Me fitting and clecoing the right skin on

Tomorrow the right elevator will be riveted!

That's what the right counterweight looks like after it has been fitted in the 713 skin

One of my neighbors, Bernie, came by to check out my empennage. He promised to help me bucking the wings!

Took both the elevators apart today and deburred (edge and holes) and alu-etched all parts. Long day, but fruitful. Tomorrow I'll prime the parts in my new paint tent :-)

Clecod the elevator horns to their structures. Match drilled both the left and right skins to their respective structures.

Next to finishing the rudder trailing edge I drilled the holes in both counterweights and clecod the elevator structures together. Clecod the right elevator skin and the structure together. Found out that I probably have to bend the trailing edge a little more.

Have been busy match-drilling the ribs to the elevator spars. Also started with drilling the screw holes in the counterweights. What a pain! Have learned that you need to use lots and lots of oil while drilling, because my drillbit got very stuck the first hole and a little bit stuck a couple of times after that. Will continue this fun work tomorrow.

Riveted the platenuts to the trim reinforcement plate. The rivets came out really nice and flush.

Riveted the stiffeners and trim reinforcement plate to the left elevator skin.

Bend the left elevator trailing edge. Like the right skin trailing edge, this one came out nice.

Clecod together the left and right counterweigt skins to their respective spar-rib structures.

Dimpled holes in the left elevator skin using my C-frame. Alu-etched the stiffeners and trim reinforcement plate. Ready for priming and riveting tomorrow!

Match drilled, edge deburred and dimpled the stiffeners to the left elevator skin tonight.

Match drilled, edge deburred and dimpled the trim reinforcement plate to the skin.

Stiffeners and reinforcement plate ready for priming!

Got some time in the shop tonight. Backriveted the stiffeners to the right elevator and bend the skin.

Started to match-drill the ribs 703 and 704 to the spar 702.

No building today, but I did fly again after quite some months of flying inactivity. My IFR currency is about to expire, so I decided to get back in the air again, found an instrument instructor at KILG (Tom Dougherty of Delaware Aviation) and flew for a couple of hours in a Piper Archer II today. When you're building an airplane it's easy to forget how much fun it is to fly! I thought I would be really rusty, but I didn't do too bad: flew 3 GPS approaches, did some holding and tracking and also some nice spot-on landings. And all in an airplane I didn't fly in before! GPS was also new to me, but much easier to use than I anticipated. It really comes down to flying the needles as I have always done on ILS and VOR approaches. Next time we do another bunch of approaches and that should make me current again! In the evening we had some friends over for dinner, so no time to get in the shop.

Deburred and dimpled stiffeners and right elevator skin. Etched and primed the stiffeners. Pretty boring stuff!!

My buddy Mike and I have taken an important decision today: instead of the fuselage kit we have ordered the wing kit today! And probably would go for the QB fuse later on. Although when I can get the wings build within 6 months or so (and I think that's realistic) I might go slow-build fuselage as well. Anyway... got some time in the shop tonight (after faxing the order form to Vans) and match-drilled the stiffeners with the right elevator skin. Also started to get the blue packing material off with my soldering iron; sticky stuff! Oh and I know understand why the J, K and L stiffeners have to be shorted: they run against the trailing edge and will probably be bend too when I bend the edge.

Tonight I've trimmed and deburred all the elevator stiffeners.

There are some stiffeners (J, K, L) that have to be made by shortening stiffeners D, E, F by a certain amount. I have not done this yet as I don't understand why that is necessary. They seem to fit fine as is. Have to check that again tomorrow.

Back from a short vacation to visit my parents in Europe. It feels good to spent some time in the shop again. The rudder trailing edge still have to be glued, but I'll keep that for the weekend when I have some more time. Tonight I've cut all the elevator stiffeners. Hopefully I have some time tomorrow to polish them and get them ready for match-drilling.