February 10th, 2008
Mounting the Elevator
Today was a productive day working on the plane. It warmed up quite a bit this weekend which made things easier to work on in the garage. I bought some shelves from Costco on Saturday. I spent a couple hours organizing the garage and putting the wing parts up out of the way. I still need to find a place to store the skins where they wont get dinged up. Before I start on the spars, I decided to go back and fix something that had been bugging me. The trim tab... I also closed the leading edge of the left elevator and mounted the elevators to the HS.
Here I have just finished rolling the leading edges of the left elevator. So far, rolling the leading edges has been about my least favorite part of building an RV. It is time consuming and requires patience to get them to turn out right.
Everything came out really good.
Here is one of the new shelves I put up. I have another one on the other side of the garage. It was really nice having the extra storage for all the parts and pieces.
I was having a hard time letting go of a small problem that was bugging me with the trim tab. It was no big deal and it would have been fine for most people. I already replaced the trim tab hinge once before. The new hinge I installed had just a tad bit of a curve in it that made for a small binding feel when it moved back and fourth. Just to be anal retentive, I drilled it out and will replace it with a brand new hinge from Van's.
I am getting really good at replacing trim tab hinges!
After the trim tab was cleaned up, I moved on to mounting the elevators. I used my rod end bearing tool to adjust the rod end bearings on both elevators to spec and proceeded to attach them to the HS. I had to put the rudder and VS on there for a picture.
This is starting to look really cool.
The HS skins must be trimmed to allow for the elevator to swing freely. I marked the cuts with a sharpie and used the snips to make the rough cuts. The plans call for a minimum of 1/8" gap between the elevator and HS.
With the skins cut away the elevator is free to swing. Initially, the elevator is out of balance but will be balanced later in the build process. Use a protractor to check the swing in both directions.
Here is the completed cut after lots of filing and cleaning with the emery cloth and scotch brite.
 Previous Construction LogTopNext
|
