July 16, 2020
I started today with a hardware store run. I purchased some 3/8″ shaft collars and springs for the brake pedals. I don’t like the idea of dragging brakes so adding some spring returns will ensure the pedals are held in place during taxi.
I also picked up a coupling nut and plastic insert to make the “completely square” spacer that has to go between the elevator horns for drilling the pushrod mount.
I mounted the elevators on the tail and clamped the whole thing to the workbench. I clamped both the elevators in the faired position, put the coupling nut between the horns and drilled the pushrod hole. After drilling and enlarging the hole, I put some washers in as spacers and tightened a bolt down.
The elevators are only out of level maybe 1/32-1/16″ at the front of the counter-balance weights compared left to right. While not absolutely even, this is dam close and I’m happy to counter this with a little bit of roll trim.
Once Kacy finished work for the day we mounted the horizontal stabilizer on the fuselage and started the process of aligning it to drill the mounting holes. The four holes that go into the rear deck need to hit an L-channel reinforcement bar that’s under the deck when drilling from the top down. We took our time to make sure that everything was lined up, it was a lot of measuring with the calipers and drawing lines to visualize the set-up. It turned out as well as we could’ve hoped, the edge distances are solid and everything is in-line.
With that work done, Kacy dropped the fiberglass fairing in place just to get a sense of how it’ll look when assembled. It was fun to imagine the final assembly of the horizontal.
-Paul
(Total Build Time: 433.6 hrs)