Empennage


Elevators 21 (5.0 hours)

Today was a productive day except that everything I did I had already done previously….

The new left elevator skin and stiffeners arrived on Tuesday. I had a final exam for my programming course on Thursday, so I didn’t even open the box until today. I quickly set to work so I can catch myself back up to where I was. I delaminated the vinyl, cut, shaped, and final drilled the stiffeners, deburred the skin for the stiffeners and finally dimpled all of the stiffeners. I’m hoping tomorrow that I can dimple the skin and prime so that this week I can find time to back rivet the stiffeners. At that point I’ll almost be caught back up with about 4 weeks until the wings arrive. Now that my class is over, I’m still confident I can finish the empennage before the wings arrive.20130720-190917.jpgThe new skin is so much cleaner than the second hand skin I previously had. Just reiterates in my mind that I will not buy anything else second hand for this plane. (Save possibly tools)20130720-190923.jpg20130720-190934.jpg

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Trim Tab 1 (3.5 hours)

First an update on the left elevator: the parts will arrive Tuesday via FEDEX ground.  I should be caught back up in a weekend.

On to the trim tab.  The first project was to remove the blue plastic in order to begin work on the trim tab.  Next I used Mike Bullock’s brake to bend the trailing edge.  I used my hand seamers and a few rulers to complete the trailing edge bend.  After the fiasco of screwing up the tab on the elevator, I set about bending the tabs on the trim tab today.  After discussion with Jack during the setup for the Gathering tomorrow, I think I had the right approach in mind.  I bought some oak planks to use as my bending blocks.  Double sided carpet tape and two clamps held everything in place.  This is extremely easy to mess up and a severe pain in the butt.  In the end I was successful.  Both sides are bent the appropriate amount and in the correct location.  There are a few areas where its not the prettiest but its perfectly airworthy and I’m happy enough with the result.  This is one area that you should definitely take your time with and practice.20130712-203759.jpg

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I got a flat yoke from Avery tools.  This yoke doesn’t accept a die in the upper receiver but acts as the flat die itself.  This should allow me to finish up those few pesky rivets on the rudder and elevator that I could not access.20130712-203818.jpg