The Trials and Tribulations of a Novice Airplane Kit Builder
Elevator
Date: 7-23-2006Number of Hours: 3.50 Manual Reference: 6 - Elevators Brief Description: Elevator Preparation Cut all the angle stiffeners to the proper sizes and cleco'd to the skins. This took quite a while for some reason. Misread the direction on piece L and cut it 1 hole too short. You can see what I'm talking about in Image 1, the second stiffener up from the bottom. Ordered up some new stiffeners to fix it from Vans. Match drilling tomorrow night...
Date: 7-24-2006Number of Hours: 0.75 Manual Reference: 6 - Elevators Brief Description: Elevator Preparation continued Match Drilled the stiffeners and the plate that goes around the trim area. Thought about deburring... that's as far as I got.
Date: 7-31-2006Number of Hours: 1.25 Manual Reference: 6 - Elevators Brief Description: Elevator Preparation continued Nothing exciting... Deburred the stiffeners and skins.
Date: 8-5-2006 Number of Hours: 2.50 Manual Reference: 6 - Elevators Brief Description: Elevator Stiffener Assembly Dimpled the skins and E-615 trim plate. Riveted stiffeners and E-615 plate to skins. Also installed plate nuts for E-615. Had a heck of a time with the stiffeners... I riveted a stealth stiffener to the skin so I had to drill out all the rivets and install a non stealth stiffener. About half of the rivets that went nearest the crease on the trailing edge had to be drilled out and redone.. the skin would lift while riveting which left the head of the rivet raised. I am learning real quick when starting a new piece to start riveting on the side that will be seen the least once completed. Then move on to more visible areas! I applied this idea today and most of my problem areas described above will end up on the bottom side of the elevators
Date: 8-6-2006Number of Hours: 3.00 Manual Reference: 6 - Elevator Brief Description: Elevator Right Preparation My daughter Olivia is always a big help! She is a master at the C-Frame dimpler! Got a lot done on the right elevator today. Bent both elevators using a 2x8 hinged to my work bench. Formed the counter balance weight so it would fit in E713. Cleco'd everything together and final drilled. All turned out good. I did run into a few problems with the stiffeners. Some were a little too long since I formed them in the reverse of what they should have been. Short story that I don't want to revisit... anyway i cut the excess off with the dremel and buffed down with the mini scotch brite wheel. All is good... took about a half hour to fix my mistakes.
Date: 8-10-2006Number of Hours: 3.00 Manual Reference: 6 - Elevator Brief Description: Elevator Right Assembly Riveted the skeleton together. Fitted the skeleton and cleco'd the skin to the left elevator.
Date: 8-20-2006Number of Hours: 4.00 Manual Reference: 6 - Elevator Brief Description: Elevator Left Preparation Final drilled, deburred, dimpled and primed all components of the left elevator.
Date: 8-25-2006 Number of Hours: 3.00 Manual Reference: 6 - Elevator Brief Description: Elevator Left Preparation Started off dimpling the skin... that took about 15 minutes or so with the pneumatic tool. Moved onto installing the electric trim. Mounted the brackets which turned out to be too close to the opening of the elevator so I had to cut the brackets a little. After that obstacle I had to remove some excess alumimum from the plate so that the pivot screw and saftey pin would not hit when extending or retracting the trim. Dimpled and machine countersunk the plate to accept the screws as flush as I could get them. Installed everything and screwed to the elevator. Used the 12V cordless drill to extend/retract the trim to make sure everything would work correctly.
Date: 8-27-2006Number of Hours: 2.00 Manual Reference: 6 - Elevator Brief Description: Elevator Left Tabs After screwing up the bending of the tabs, I took the dremel and cut them off. Used some scrap aluminum and formed a piece to fit. This was actually one heck of a lot easier to do compared to bending the tabs.
Date: 9-3-2006Number of Hours: 4.00 Manual Reference: 6 - Elevator Brief Description: Elevator Left Assembly Assembled the left elevator today. Took quite a while to rivet it all together. Had to fix a couple of holes where i double tapped witht the pneumatic squeezer. I'm getting good at doing that. Anyway, its all together and I did the very first step of the trim tab which is putting the final bend in.
Date: 9-10-2006Number of Hours: 0.00 Manual Reference: 6 - Elevator Brief Description: Elevator Trim Tab Ok so I spent some time yesterday trying to fix some mistakes that I have made on the left elevator. I thought I had everything squared away until today. Started working on the attachments for the trim cable on the bottom of the trim tab. I removed the spring on the rivet gun as it was hitting these pieces, I also forgot that I had changed the air pressure up to 90 so when I started riveting, the mushroom set hammered the heck out of the trim tab and dented it. This coupled with all the other little mistakes and me not really following the directions for bending the tabs has led me to just buy a new trim tab skin.
Date: 9-16-2006Number of Hours: 3.00 Manual Reference: 6 - Elevator Brief Description: Elevator Leading Edges No images. Rolled the leading edges of both elevators. Still waiting on the new trim tab.
Date: 9-24-2006Number of Hours: 3.00 Manual Reference: 6 - Elevator Brief Description: Elevator Trim Tab Received the new Trim tab skin. Actually followed the directions this time and all turned out well.
Date: 9-28-2006Number of Hours: 1.00 Manual Reference: 6 - Elevator Brief Description: Elevator Trim Tab Nothing exciting tonight. Just attached the PIANO hinge onto the left elevator for the trim tab. Deburred everything to get it ready for riveting on Saturday. The trailing edge is straight as an arrow as far as I can tell. Did my best to follow the directions to make it straight. I fabricated a part for the elevator trailing edge on the left, to fill the excessive gap between it and the trim tab. Although not shown, it looks quite a bit better than it did. Anyway, for some reason I have had Russian on my mind all night so I think I will go watch a little Firefox with Clint Eastwood now and call it a night.
Date: 9-30-2006Number of Hours: 2.00 Manual Reference: 6 - Elevator Brief Description: Elevator Trim Tab Riveted everything together today in regards to the trim tab. Attempted to set the proper travel limits of the tab itself. Will need to work on this more but it is close right now. From what I understand in the manual is that there should be 25 degrees travel upwards and 35 degrees of travel down. Right now I have the opposite.
Date: 10-1-2006Number of Hours: 1.00 Manual Reference: 6 - Elevator Brief Description: Elevator Assembly Added a new building partner today. Cody is a buddy of Mitch from the Tigers football team. The both of them helped hold the elevators one at a time while I installed the AN bolts into the rod end bearings. This took a while and wouldn't have been possible without the steady hands of Cody and Mitch. Thanks guys!
Date: 10-6-2006Number of Hours: 1.00 Manual Reference: 6 - Elevator Brief Description: Elevator/Horizontal Stabilizer Spent some time cutting down the lead counter weight on the right elevator. I hadn't noticed this in the drawing until after assembling the elevator. I used a hack saw and then a file to radius the inside corner. Took about a half hour this way but I got it done. I also removed the material on the hroizontal stab so that I could get full travel of the elevators.
Date: 10-7-2006Number of Hours: 3.00 Manual Reference: 6 - Elevator Brief Description: Elevator/Horizontal Stabilizer Went over to my buddy Chad Jensen's to borrow his bushing to protect the hinge bearing on the HS. He also hooked me up with a wing leading edge stand since he finished his wings recently. Went home and drilled the elevator horns. Also drilled out some rivets on the HS and VS that were sticking up a little bit. Fitted both elevators, rudder to VS and set it all on the workbench. It looks pretty darn sweet!! And to top it all off, I think it might actually stay together come first flight day :) (which is about ten years out I think)
Date: 10-8-2006Number of Hours: 0.50Manual Reference: 6 - Elevator Brief Description: Elevator/Horizontal Stabilizer Balance
TOTAL HOURS for ELEVATORS: 41.5
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Hobbs:Anything in this site is for entertainment purposes only and is not meant to be instructions in any way shape or form.
