The servo is mounted on a pair of small aluminum angles, and there are no holes prepunched in the panel to attach these. I clecoed the angles onto the servo and placed the servo in place on the panel to get an idea of where the holes will need to go.
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| The clamps are to weigh that side down enough to where the whole thing wouldn't fall off the edge of the table. |
After painstakingly nudging the servo into a position where the servo arm was as close as possible to being centered with the cutout in the panel while abiding by the dimensions called out on the small electric trim diagram on the left elevator diagram, I clamped one of the angles in place.
Being careful to not move the mount from its position I removed the trim servo and clamped the other side of the angle to the panel.
At this point I could match drill the center hole in the angle to the panel, cleco it, then drill the remaining two holes. I then clecoed on the servo with the other angle still attached, then clamped the other angle onto the panel so I could match drill it to the panel too. Soon I was left with this:
These will be fastened with flush rivets, so I'll need to prime and dimple these parts before I can finish the assembly.
I moved on to the trim spar for the left elevator. I hadn't yet match drilled it to the skin, so I took care of that quickly. The bottom flange is dimpled as per usual, but the top flange is countersunk instead. This is so the bottom side of it will be flat to allow for the trim tab hinge to be riveted on.
To keep everything in place I inserted a piece of scrap wood into the spar and clamped everything to the workbench. To allow the countersink bit to do its job I match drilled a hole into the wood to accommodate it.
Not much later (I'm not as stressed about countersinking things at this point) I had some countersunk holes. They ended up enlarged and knife-edged like the rudder trailing edge, but if they weren't then the dimpled skin wouldn't sit flush against the spar.
I tested for the correct depth by clecoing the spar to the skin.
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| Yep, that'll work. |
With that out the way my last thing to do was to start filing away material from the right elevator counterweight. The right elevator won't have the added weight of the trim system like the left elevator, so the counterweight needs to have a fair bit of material shaved away to balance things correctly.
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| "That's not too bad," I thought. "This shouldn't take long." If only that were true... |
The task started off okay, but I soon realized that removing lead takes a lot more time than I thought. Even with my relatively sharp vixen file and a number of other rough files lying around the shop, it takes FOREVER to shave of the material speck by speck.
I kept at it for around two hours without a significant amount of progress until my tired and cramped hands and arms were screaming at me to stop. I think I'll come back to this chore later.
