FittingEmpennage

I had some help from Gonzalo, Adriana's nephew who is visiting from Argentina. That was helpful as the plan was to bolt the horizontal and vertical stabilizers to the fuse for good. We started with the horizontal stab and first bolted the front spar to the aft deck and longerons followed by bolting the rear spar to the rabbit ears. Next was the vertical stab. Don't know why I missed this before, but there was quite a large gap between the F781 plate and the front spar. This called for some shims!

These were quickly fabricated, primed and riveted to the spar (it's the sandwich in the image).

Since I bought some superglue at home depot this morning I glued the washer Vans calls out on the plans to the rear spar. It is to make sure there is proper distance because of the slight angle the stabilizer makes with the fuse.

After that the front and rear spar of the vertical stab got bolted tight to the fuse.

The last task for today was measuring and drilling the holes in the rudder cable links. We first drilled a hole in one side of the link, bolted it to the rudder pedals and measured where the hole for the cable was supposed to go. After doing that for the left side, the right side was easily done too.

And so finally the rudder could be moved properly from the cabin. See the movie Gonzalo shot of this great moment in time!

Today is Independence Day! My goal is to be independent of the airlines when I fly places so this is a day to cherish :-)

I drilled the front spar of the vertical stabilizer to the horizontal stab front spar and the 718 plate.

I still have to drill the top row of rivet holes as I can't get to those with my angle drill, but I'll do that later. Next was drilling the elevator stop angle to the aft deck. This was easy and the bolt holes have good edge distance on the longerons.

Next was drilling the rear spar to the 712 bulkhead. 4 bolt holes need to go there to keep the spar tight to the bulkhead. Problem is that I already have riveted the tiedown bracket on the back of the bulkhead, so Vans method of drilling the holes in the vert stab rear spar first doesn't work here. Luckily I can get my angle drill through the hole in the aft deck and drill the holes from the inside. Worked perfectly!

Now that the vertical stab is temporarily bolted down, I could hang the rudder. Had to get it off an on a couple of times to get the eyebolts the right distance on the hinges, but finally it swung freely.

I already made the two rudder stops, but when I clecod them on, it turned out I'll have to remake these as the distance from the rudder to the edge of the elevators was not large enough. I measured 3/4 of an inch while Vans tells you it needs 1 and 1/8 of an inch to get the 35 degrees of swing. No big deal: they were remade in 10 mins and clecod to the fuse again.

Notice the hole on the outside... I made a mistake and drilled it on the wrong side of the stop! A well don't think an extra holes matters in this case except for less weight :-) Next I riveted the stops and bolted the rudder cables to the rudder itself.

Pretty cool how the rudder swings from left to right when I pull the cables in the cabin. To hook them up to the rudder pedals I started making cable links from 4130 steel. I didn't finish this today, but will work more on it tomorrow.

Last but not least here's a picture of the full empennage.

After that I removed the elevators and rudder, vertical stab and horizontal stab for deburring and priming of parts.

Today I finished the elevator pushrod. I still miss 5 rivets but to try the controls out this will do. Mounted the control column and sticks in the cabin and connected the sticks using the hexagonal pushrod.

I had some trouble getting the smaller pushrod into the center channel; I had to take the rod ends off before I could get it to go in (with some force). Both the smaller and large pushrod got bolted to the elevator bellcrank in the middle.

The other end of the elevator pushrod got bolted to the horns at the end of the fuse. I used three washers on each side to make it snug. Don't know if this will be the final amount, but it's only temporarily after all.

After all this the elevators could be moved up and down from the cabin. I made a movie to show this (Michela was moving the sticks while I used the camera).

Next was the vertical stabilizer. First thing was using my Dremel to cut 5/8 inch off of the front spar.

Then the stab got clamped to the bulkhead and I measured the distance to the tips of the horizontal stab to make sure it would be perfectly vertical.

I fabricated the piece of angle that holds the rear spar to the aft deck and functions as an elevator stop. This got drilled to the stab and that's where I stopped for the day.

Worked on the elevator pushrods today. Finished drilling the small pushrod and one side of the large elevator pushrod and put msp-42 blind rivets in, but noticed that I don't have enough rivets left for the other side of the large pushrod (I need about 5 more) and have asked Mike if he can get me those.

After making sure the incidence of the horizontal stab was ~0 degrees, I drilled the rear spar to the fuse. I measured using the distance between the tooling holes and the aft deck and put the digital level on top.

I bolted the spar temporarily to the fuse.

Next was putting the elevators back on and clamping them to the horizontal stab. I noticed that the left elevator horn runs pretty close to the edge of the opening in the aft deck, so I'll have to trim that down a bit later.

The next step is bolting the big elevator push rod to the horns, but since I still needed to prime the inside of the tube, I skipped this step (I did prime the inside of the tube and the smaller one that runs from the bellcrank to the control column as well).

Next was the vertical stabilizer. I got that one and the rudder from the wall as well and oh my, have these pieces been gathering dust :-) After some dusting I took the rudder off and marked 5/8 inch to be cut of the front spar of the VS.

I also searched for the part that ties the front spar to the front spar of the HS. I clamped it to the fuse and put the VS on top for a pic :-)

Started to fit the horizontal stabilizer today. First I removed the elevators and fetched the stab from the wall (it has been hanging there for more than a year now!). The stab was clamped to the table with the hinges hanging over the sides. After that the elevators were mounted and clamped to the stab sides.

Next was checking which elevator horn was most facing backwards. They actually are almost perfectly lined up! (which of course I know already, but forgot about...).

So I removed the left elevator and drilled a pilot hole at the location indicated on the plans.

Put the elevator back in place and fabricated a wood block of 29/32 inch think (that's the distance between my horns) for match drilling with the right elevator.

After that was done, the elevators were removed again and the stab was fitted to the fuse. Figuring out the center by measuring from the tips of the elevators to a point on the firewall made sure the thing was lined up correctly. While clamped at this position I started drilling bolt holes through the forward spar into the aft deck using my angle drill. Started small and went gradually up to the right size (#12).

While clamped at this position I started drilling bolt holes through the forward spar into the aft deck using my angle drill. Started small and went gradually up to the right size (#12). When all that was done I temporarily put bolts through the parts to keep them together.

This looks cool. The canoe actually starts to look like a plane!!