Back in the saddle! Elevator work continues.

I'd like to thank all my friends for hanging in there while real life took me away from this project.  :)   Progress has been slow, but I've finally reached a point where I can show you some good pictures. Enjoy!

We left off last time with elevator stiffeners completed and ready to rivet. Now, the elevator skins have been drilled, dimpled, deburred and primed. The stiffeners have beed attached, trim servo/hatch/mounting plate are finished, and the skins have been bent. The biggest lesson I learned during this phase was to SLOW DOWN! I ended up having to replace both the elevator skins with new ones, mainly from placing artificial deadlines on myself and trying to go too fast when i was WAY too tired. $165 mistake if you include shipping, but lesson learned- on with the show.    ;)



Here, we see the skin stiffeners being test-fit to the right-hand skin. All parts are ready for riveting.

The stiffeners are then back-riveted in place, same as with the rudder. Shop heads turned out nice.

Since I chose the electric trim option, the next step is to get the trim mounting plates and servo installed. Here's the Ray Allen servo.

The servo gets match-drilled to this hatch...

Then the hatch gets screwed to this plate (notice the nutplates attached here). The plate is riveted to the left-hand elevator skin, and serves double duty by also acting as a stiffener for the skin.

 

This photo shows me using two cleco-clamps to hold a servo-mount for drilling. Six holes in all were drilled, three for each mount. Then the mounts were riveted to the hatch, and the servo attached with 4 screws and nylon locknuts. In order to avoid the servo-to-mount spacing issues that some builders have documented, I used shorter AN426AD3-3 rivets in the 2 rearmost holes. This gave me just enough clearance, and the shop heads were still within spec.

  

 

 Here's a shot of the completed servo assembly, attached to the skin and ready to go.





Another pic of the servo, and a view of how the mounting plate looks from the outside. 

 

 And here's how the hatch looks when installed. The photo looks ugly; it's much prettier in person :)

 The last task that I'll document in this section is the bending of the skins, using my home-made bending brake. High-tech stuff involving 2 pieces of wood and a few door hinges. No pics of the bent skins, but everything went well.

  

 So, that brings us up to date! Now the spars, ribs, and control horns will be installed, and work will begin on the trim tab. Check back after the Holidays... I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Take care, all.