STORING THE ELEVATORS Before I can begin attaching the horizontal stabilizer, I have to disassemble all of my hard work. As predicted. I removed all of the bolts and washers from the elevator horns and labeled them for location. I also removed both elevators and did the same with those… Read More »Putting some junk in the trunk
With both elevators attached and aligned, I match drilled and attached the elevator horns.
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… Read More »Mounted both elevators
I mounted the left elevator to the HS for the first time and learned some important lessons along the way about alignment and clearance.
What a marathon, but it really feels great to have one of the first moving parts of the airplane done. When I first began the elevators I had no idea how involved they would become, but this truly was one of the more involved and challenging parts of the build… Read More »Elevators = DONE
After much back and forth, I decided that for the process of attaching the trim tabs to the piano hinge and subsequently to the elevators, I needed to make a call to the bullpen and bring out a real ace. I think you’ll see I made precisely the right call.… Read More »Called in a real trim tab expert
Lots of action today in a pretty good sized build session, so let’s jump right in. I started by looking back from the very beginning of the elevators section of the manual to make sure that I have accomplished every task along the way since I had jumped around a… Read More »Two steps forward, one step back into tank sealant
With the rudder squarely in my rear view mirror, I knew the day would come again soon whereby I would be expected to roll some leading edges and rivet them together. This was a particularly challenging skill for me to embrace last time and I ended up drilling out a… Read More »They see me rollin’… leading edges
These elevators have a surprising level of complexity to them and have taken longer to assemble than I had originally estimated. With this part of the process, it isn’t the large volumes of repetitive work that slow you down, it is the small detail work that takes a long time… Read More »Stairway to Heaven – aka “The never-ending elevator”
Today started off innocently enough with me getting back into a rhythm after being out the past 10 days on vacation (which by the way was magnificent – thanks for asking). I completed riveting the leading edge spars on each of the elevators and then moved on to the counterbalance… Read More »Tank sealant and rivets – breakfast of champions