Elevators:
August 21, 2005
After finishing the rudder it was time to start the elevators. I first went back to the manual and read the instructions very carefully. I then finally took down the VS and rudder drawings and hung up the Elevator drawings (1 for each of them).
After studying the drawings for some time and becoming familiar with the part numbers, etc. it was time to start fabricating. Seems like I was just doing this?!?!? I cut out the right elevator stiffeners in relatively short order. I made a final cut for the taper and labeled all of them accordingly. Some final grinding was all it took to make the parts nice and tapered into their final shape.
Soldering iron time – I probably like this the least because I don’t feel like any progress is being made while I am working on things. After removing the vinyl in the appropriate spots I was able to cleco the stiffeners to the spar.
WHAT THE HECK IS THIS??? I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT THIS STIFFENER IS NOT ALL PRE-PUNCHED!!!
OK…Just kidding, I am thankful to have a kit that is so well prepared that I am not sitting here with a rivet fan and a ruler trying to figure out where my holes and rivets are supposed to go and having to mark that all out myself. I cannot believe that people did this before pre-punched kits! My respect goes out to them.
Here is the inside of the Right Elevator before drilling
After final drilling I marked the top stiffeners with a T so I could keep them straight and took the right elevator into the living room (my personal airplane part storage area). I grabbed the left Elevator skin and proceeded to make use of the soldering iron again. Did I mention that I really hate this part? I finished with this daunting task :-) and moved on to stiffener fabrication. Hmmm….Looks like there are some different sizes here. Eh, I will work on the E720H ones first and work on the rest later. Its getting late and Scarlet is none too happy with her daddy being out in the garage for the last two days!
August 22, 2005
While I was at work Jenni called and asked if there was anything she could work on. I had her remove the stiffeners from the right elevator and debur them. When I got home from work I had Jenni dimple the stiffeners while I was out in the shop deburring the right elevator skin. Jenni is afraid of control surface skins because they are so thin and she is afraid of making knife edges.
When I got my dimple dies back from the better half - I dimpled the skin with my wiz bang DRDT-2 and brought the stiffeners out to prime them. Then sun had already gone down so the Arizona sun would not be turning these things into super hot darts like with the rudder skeleton. I primed the top stiffeners and the inside of the elevator skin. I know some people don’t bother and there is the argument about weight and necessity, blah, blah, blah, but I had a bunch of mixed primer left and at nearly $100/2qts I was not going to waste this so I shot the inside of the elevator skin.
A few minutes of drying and Jenni came out to the shop to see what I was up to and could not believe that I was already taping the rivets in for back riveting in the stiffeners. It was 9:30 already and the birds were requesting my presence so I called it a night. I want to close this thing out tomorrow and get a good jump on the left Elevator but EAA Chapter 228 is having their monthly meeting tomorrow night so it might be pretty quiet in the shop.
Here is a picture of the primed elevator skin with the stiffeners laid out waiting to be back riveted.
August 24, 2005
Jenni tried to back rivet the stiffeners to the skin when I was at work but the air pressure I told her to use was too high (my fault) and the rivets were flattening out. I had her stop and told her that I would look at it when I got home. When I got home, I decreased the air pressure and was able to get the stiffeners riveted to the right elevator skin.
August 25, 2005
I assembled the counterbalance ribs and skin to the right elevator final drilled the counterbalance skin through the counter weight and through the rib ends. I assembled the Right Elevator skeleton and final drilled the skeleton with the control horn attached. I was a little dismayed that the holes did not line up perfectly, so I had to tweak it a little. Time for the trailing edge…
Note: DO NOT BUY HOME DEPOT WOOD. I got my wood from Lowe’s because the Home Depot close to the house has wood that would be better served as a fire starter because of the massive warping that I can visibly see. One piece I saw at Home Depot had so much twist in it that there was nearly a 2” gap at one end of the wood when the other end was held down. The Lowe’s by the house is a different story. I was able to find plenty of straight wood and even found one that met my criteria for a trailing edge bending brake.
It took me about 20 minutes to make the bending brake and 20 minutes to decide if I was going to actually bend my trailing edge. I searched the archives and found reference to a 1/8” dowel being used. I did not do that and my edge came out beautiful.
August 26, 2005
I clecoed the skin on and final drilled the skin to the skeleton in about an hour. I was a little too tired to start on the deburring because I had to work late.
August 28, 2005
I removed the skin and deburred the entire skeleton. I then dimpled the skeleton and prepped everything for priming. I went outside to prime everything and it was 113 outside. That was not the direct sunlight temp that was the temp in the shade. I primed the parts in the shade and came back in to recover a bit.
Here is a picture of my parts hanging up...I got impatient and decided to go this route...
Here is a picture of me air drying the parts after AlumaPrepping the parts
While I was cooling off, I removed some of the vinyl covering, deburred and dimpled the skin where needed. Next came the task of prepping the counterweight for installation. The manual says to use the file but that was taking me all day – the file just did not remove enough material. I then tried to cut out a section with the hack saw; no joy. I finally resorted to using a plane that is used for doors. Believe it or not, I was able to file it down within 20 minutes of working at it. I was very pleased with my results and I left enough of the weight that did not go too deep. Should I need to take more weight out; I can file or drill out more without too much trouble.
I then assembled the skeleton per the plans starting with the counterbalance rib and skin with the counter balance. Not being pleased with the fit, I took it apart and filed off a bit here and there from the counterbalance and re-assembled. Ahhh…much better (more to my liking). I was able to get the skeleton together without too much trouble although you will likely have to buck the rivets for the end rib and the counterbalance rib unless you have a squeezer with a longeron yoke.
NOTE: Do not forget to rivet the two rivets called out by the instructions on both sides of the elevator skin and counterbalance skin, lest you will be doing blind rivets. I remembered mine!
You have to slide the assembled skeleton into the skin and do a little pushing and pulling to get it to line up. After that, you cleco in the skin and make sure it all lines up. All of the rivets can be squeezed at this point. Pay special attention to the rivet callouts where you are putting them because there are 3 different kinds of rivets used in a small area. All in all, I was very pleased with how well my elevator looked when I was done. I am going to be rolling the leading edge on Wednesday. I have other commitments Monday and Tuesday.
August 31, 2005
I rolled the leading edge on the right elevator. It took a little tweaking to get the edge to my liking. There is no callout as to which skin overlaps which but common sense tells me that the top skin should overlap the bottom. Of course I thought that about the counterbalance skins and ribs too.
I cut out a few of the H stiffeners for the Left elevator. Ugh! More stiffeners!
There was a long hiatus during September - January because of house projects that took precedence.
KATRINA RELIEF:
In September I was deployed to New Orleans, LA for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. We were stationed in Gonzales, LA and worked down in the 4th District for New Orleans P.D. Those people went through a lot and really made me examine my own mortality. My hat is off to my brothers and sisters of N.O.P.D. - I am glad we could come help you guys and get you some relief. Mark, wherever you are...hope all is well. I even managed to earn a Meritorious Service Medal for our efforts down in New Orleans.
Believe me when I say this, its not about the recognition that I put this on our airplane site, its about remembering that a lot of people experienced a hell that no one should experience. It was an honor to be among those who answered the call when our brothers and sisters needed us.
BACK TO THE PLANE:
February 20, 2006
The left Elevator is going together much the same way that the right one did with the exception of an extra spar and the trim tab. I only hope that things don't get too complicated when I bend the tabs. That is the one thing that I see a lot of griping about on other builders sites. Today we finished drilling out the elevator to stiffener holes. Jenni deburred the stiffeners and skin, Alan was dimpling and I was mixing primer. After that I shot, Alan hung them up and taped in the rivets.
Back riveting the stiffeners to the left elevator.
Alan and I pulling the rivet tape after back riveting the stiffeners.
Here is a picture of the inside of the left elevator after riveting on the stiffeners.
After the stiffeners were riveted on we called it a day.
February 25, 2006
Today I drilled and dimpled the reinforcement plate for the elevator installed the nutplates on the reinforcement and back riveted that structure to the left elevator.
Here are pictures of the reinforcement plate on the elevator skin.
March 2, 2006
My stuff from Cleaveland tools arrived and I match drilled E713 to E714. I also updated my little tick marks on the build manual. I guess that's my 15 minutes for the day.
March 3, 2006
If last weekend was any indication we will be done with the elevators and trim tab by the weekend. Today we put in a quick 2.5 hours of work assembling and drilling the left elevator skeleton. After I drilled the skeleton, I bent to trailing edge of the skin and clecoed on the E701L skin. Jenni and I drilled the skeleton to the skin. We then clecoed on the WD605-1-L and drilled that to the skeleton. I used my new dimple dies that I ordered from Cleaveland to dimple the forward face of E713. Verified that the screw heads were now flush. Used the Scotchbrite wheel to bevel down the edges on E713 to fit under the skin. After it all was drilled we took it all apart and Jenni deburred stuff while I read the plans and studied stuff. I then dimpled some of the skeleton parts and turned it over to Jenni. We called it a night after the skeleton was dimpled. Jenni doesn't like to debur the skins so I left that for tomorrow.
Me drilling the left Elevator Skin
And Jenni having a go at it
March 4, 2006
This was one huge day in terms of building. Spent 10 hours in the shop working on a lot of different things. I started off by deburring the E701L skin. I also dimpled the skin with the hand squeezer. I then countersunk the top of the E606PP and countersunk the holes for E702 to E705. I then set up everything for Aluma Prepping and got ready to do the deed. As I was Aluma Prepping, Alan would take the parts and hang them up to dry. I mixed up a batch of primer as we let them dry from the Aluma prepping. Then primed all the skeleton parts and hung those up to dry. Next was to rivet on E610 and E611 to E702. Then you rivet on the nutplates. This time I did not have to replace a single rivet because my head was in the game.
Now here is where it got weird, I had to bend the tabs for the inboard edge of the elevator. They started to look pretty ugly at first but I was able to make it work. I wasn't entirely pleased with how they came out but I can use a bit of filler to shape this corner.
Riveted E703 to E704 and had 1 rivet that required drilling to replace. It started to mushroom over and would not have passed muster. Rived on E705 with the required flush head rivets and then riveted on the WD-605-1-L.
Next you have to rivet E713 to E701L so that you don't have to use blind rivets. Once that is done its time to put the skeleton into the skin. But before you do that, you need to squeeze in some RTV at the trailing edge.
Here is a picture of the RTV in the Trailing Edge. You can see where the tube back exploded and I had to wipe it up.
I clecoed on the skeleton and started squeezing rivets. You squeeze on everything except the top of E606PP. Need to order some more MK-319-BS for the trailing edge of the elevator.