Empennage
Dave and I started actually working on this in February 2002. We spent quite some time 'pounding wood' as Mike put it, making our 12' x 4' worktable. Having a table this big is really useful. Plenty of room and it's good and sturdy.
The empennage is the biggest learning experience thus far, apart form maybe the electrical, which is about where I'm at as of this writing. We learned about metal forming, drilling, dimpling, rivetting. I'm amazed it turned out so well! We had our fair share of rivets that we had to drill out, but we managed to get through it unscathed! Apart from me drilliing Dave's finger once!
Here's the sketon all cleco'd together...
With some skins too. One thing that amazed me the most was how flimsy all this stuff was by itself, and how stiff it was when it was together!
The HS spar.. This was the first ever riveting we did.
Inside the HS. Looking at the shop heads...
Completed... Well, the metalwork anyways.
Here's Dave... Looks to me like he be dimpling...
While I'm busy at it making stiffeners for the elevators and rudder.
Inside the VS... Why did I take these photos?! I've no idea!
Some elevator stiffeners I think... Could be rudder... I can't remember.
The Grinch's toe nail clippings.....
We thought we had an ingenious way to hold all the rivets in for backriveting the stiffners. Using masking tape... A piece for every rivet. Hmmm... Not sure if this added time or took it away! Anyways, I know my finger were getting sore pulling the tape off after we'd done riveting...
So we enlisted help.... Toon and Steve! Thanks guys!
We've opted to go electric trim for both elevator and ailerons...
Of course I had to try it out... It's nice to see stuff moving...
The trim tab was my second attempt after screwing up the first one. This was a tricky thoing to get right. I wanted to get the gap perfect all the way around in relation to the elevator..... It came out pretty good. I used a rivet gun to beat down the ends over the traditional wedge block arrangement I've seen on so many sites...
Ahhh yes, fibreglass... I kinda like working this stuff. It's great, apart from the sanding. I hate sanding. I know I'm going to have plenty of sanding to do.... This metal aeroplane sure has a lot of fibreglass parts! Here I'm covering the counterbalances..
The fuselage trying on the tail for size... Fits nice!
9/6/04 3 hours
I finally got to mounting the empennage today too. This is the final time. I put a dobbin of RTV on the end of the ELT antenna so it sticks in the vertical stabiliser and doesn't wear through the aluminium over time bouncing around in there. I mounted it on the rear deck, pointing up through one of the lightening holes in the VS.
Here's a shot of the final mounting. I also got the elevators lined up properly and torqued everything to spec. 25 in-lbs on those AN3's doesn't seem like enough sometimes! The HS has been collecting a lot of dust these past two years!
9/7/04 1.5 hours
Stopped by tonight on the way home and mounted the rudder. Looking good!
I also started to attach the rear position/strobe light in the fibreglass bottom. I went and asked Mike about this, and he told me the secret. It's great to have Mike around for this sort of stuff, since he's done it before he knows all the tricks. I cut a hole the right size for the lamp, drilled the mounting holes, then mixed up some resin with flox and epoxied nuts in position. Tomorrow, it should all be nicely cured, and the nuts will be held nic and securely. Thanks for the tip Mike!
Here you can see the flox over the nuts....
9/9/04 2 hours
Tonight I starting doig the rudder stops. I had one already made, which was attached to the fuse with clecos, and still had the other to do. That was about 18 months ago! We had some stops that were made to the plans, but unfortunately, they turned out to be too short so the travels were to far. Don't want the rudder clouting the elevators do we?!
Anyway, I decided in my infinitely wisdom to make something out of them. Here's a before and after shot...
I think I got a little carried away! I streamlined it a little and polished it up. I figure it might look good polished up even on a painted plane. Kind of like door hardware I guess. Here's another shot...
It took me almost an hour and a half to come up with this! I must be going mad!
The epoxy cured perfectly araound the nylock nuts for the tail strobe too. Without me there wobbling it around, it turned out pretty rigid. I got the strobe going too! Sweet!
Today I carried on where I left off last time I was here and finished up the rudder installation. This included making the right side rudder stop. After making the left side look so nice, of course, I had to follow suit with the right. Hmmm. Took a while. Anyways, I did that, and had to take off the VS in order to rivet these suckers on. Well, turned out to be a royal pain in the arse. Unfortunately, it was damn near impossible to get in there with a bucking bar, so I ended up using pop rivets in the forward rivet holes. Bugger. Well, I got them set up and got the clearances to the elevators sorted out, and we're good to go.
Next task was to fabricate the rudder control cable links that attach the cables to the pedals. These are made from steel. Luckily I caught it in the plans, and dug out a rusty old piece of 0.050" steel from the box of Van's kit bits. They ended up being quite long as I have the pedals as far forward as you can put them. It all works nice! Yippee! Another control surface that's operable! The links are only in temporarily, as I need to paint them. The bulb hanging down is the footwell courtesy light. It won't really be there, it's just not attached to the airframe yet.
