BALANCING THE LEFT ELEVATOR
The first step today was removing the left elevator. Initially I thought this would be rather frustrating having just attached it in my previous session, but it came off easily. I’m certain I will do this at least a few more times. I moved the set screws to make sure that the travel of the left elevator would not rub against the main section of the horizontal stabilizer. Turning these screws helps to align and level the angle at which the elevator fixes to the stabilizer. Ultimately, it took some time to get it all down, but I could not possibly be more pleased with the final result.
I mounted the left elevator back on the stabilizer and went about measuring the travel of it. It deflects up 29 degrees and down 33 degrees, both well-within spec laid out by Van’s.
MOUNTING AND BALANCING THE RIGHT ELEVATOR
On to the other side. Having mounted the left elevator, well, I mounted the left elevator. The right elevator, while identical in process, was aligned much differently than the left elevator. In a similar fashion, I mounted, unmounted, moved set screws, and remounted a few times before I was happy with the final result. In the end, I was pleased again. The travel on the right elevator was identical to the left elevator. Upon reading some other pages I found that this was not always the case. I’m pretty happy that mine worked out perfect the first time.
Here they are, the mounted elevators. I’ll admit to being pretty excited taking this picture. It was one of my first real assembly projects completed on the plane and it was fun to see it come together. I’m excited to keep moving forward on the tailcone assembly and see the plane keep coming together.
- Total time today – 2 hours
- Total time empennage – 203 hours
- Total time aircraft – 212 hours