I dragged the shelves full of wing parts out of the way and moved the horizontal stabilizer from the wall to my workbench. It took a bit of effort and some careful table placement, but I was able to get my right elevator attached via the rod end bearings and some bolts.
It's not specifically mentioned by the plans, but the first thing you notice when trying to move the elevator through its full range of travel is that the horizontal stabilizer gets in the way on each side. As it turns out, you're supposed to cut out small sections on each side of the horizontal stabilizer to allow the elevator to pass on each side with a 1/8" clearance.
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| That's... quite a bit less than 1/8". |
There was a dremel tool floating around the garage, so I picked up some cutoff wheels and prepared to trim. In hindsight the whole thing was pretty painless, but it's never a good feeling when you're told to cut into a perfectly good airplane part.
I started by drilling a hole near the corner of where I wanted to cut. This would avoid any cracking at the point where the two straight cuts meet. Holding the dremel as steady as I could, I slowly made each cut.
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| Attempt #1. |
After some additional cutting and a little burr removal with a file I test fitted the elevator again. The counterbalance cleared the HS this time, but with slightly less than the desired 1/8" gap.
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| Success! |
Using the cut I had just made as a base, I flipped the HS and trimmed the bottom flange to allow full travel.
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| The duct tape prevents any further scratching until I can widen the gaps and smooth the edges. |
I did the same cuts for the left side while test fitting the left elevator, and soon I had two elevators with full travel. Both elevators were smooth through most of their range, but both had some slight binding with the HS skin at full nose up deflection. I'll still need to adjust the rod end bearings and trim the bottom of the rear HS spar to eliminate any binding and allow full travel, but I'm going to wait until I can install the whole assembly on the fuselage before doing any of that.
Now that everything was swinging freely I went back and filed the edges smooth and even with the rest of the HS skin.
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| I tried smoothing the corner after it had been drilled, but this was the result. I'll try to round it a bit more, but it shouldn't affect anything too badly. If it does I can always stop drill any cracks. |
The last big things to do on the tail are to install the fiberglass tips (I'll do all the fiberglass work at the same time), drill the elevator horns for the HS bearing and pushrod connections (I'll install everything onto the fuselage before this to ensure proper alignment of everything), and balance the elevators (I can do this once the fiberglass tips are close to being installed and if I paint the tail before the first flight). That means that, for now, the empennage kit is done! My wings have been begging me to start working on them since January, so it's finally time to stop neglecting them.
