Together with my dad, we finished the Empennage kit today, by attaching the Elevators to the Horizontal Stabilizer. The counter balance weight arm of the Elevator does not fit in the Horizontal Stabilizer. Hence we have to trim the Horizontal Stabilizer, until it fits. Before trimming we drill a hole […]
Attaching the Rudder to the Vertical Stabilizer starts with inserting the hinges with the right depth into the Rudder. The drawings note the distance, however it is important that all three hinges align, in order to get a smooth moving Rudder. Once the hinges are inserted I can start fitting […]
Today my dad helped me again with the leading edges of the Elevators and finishing the Trim Tab attachment with the new piano hinge. The leading edges of the Elevators need to be “rolled” or bend according to a specific diameter. First we use the hand seemer to gently bend […]
At the last day of 2017, I decided to do several small left-overs on the Elevators. First up the tricky trailing edge rivets on both the right and left Elevator. These rivets do no have enough “room” to be able to squeeze them or even get the bucking bar in […]
After having the skin of the Elevators bend (intentionally), now they can be riveted to the understructure. Starting with the right Elevator (the easy one), I could set most rivets with the pneumatic squeezer. There is one particular rivet (in the corner of the ribs and the spar) that needs […]
To bend the trailing edge of the Elevator and the sides of the left Elevator and Trim tab, it’s a good idea to have two people. So I invited my dad again to help me with that. Here you can see we already bend the sides of the Trim tab […]
Just as the previous time, it was again cold. I had some trouble inserting the rivets in the holes, because my fingers were cold. I decided to build the right and left Elevator in parallel. The manual first describes the right Elevator and then the left, but I found that […]
There are two drawings for the Elevators. One for the left and one for the right Elevator. The left Elevator has the Trim Tab with the servo motor, which make it a bit more complex. To be able to use screws for later access to the servo motor, the Trim […]
First “ice-day” of this winter, which is a day where the temperature doesn’t go above freezing point. However I do need to Prime the Elevator parts in order to finish the Empennage. My solution is to use an old electrical heater, to heat the workshop to at least 18°C. It […]
My first major screw up happened while working on the piano hinge of the Trim Tab. I’ve checked the drawings and the construction manual. However, I didn’t mark the part that I had to trim, because I was sure what I was doing, NOT! At this point everything was still […]