May 30 -- Left Elevator and Trim Tab

Been forever since I worked on the project. The Luscombe annual, followed by a trip to Europe for close to a month conspired... And now a deck refinishing project lurks. Couldn't finish it last summer thanks to neck surgery. Not to mention that the drill press is in pieces for a long-overdue overhaul.

At any rate some modest progress.

On the elevator, I drilled the trailing edge wedge, also known as the apex wedge. Learned a lot on previous attempts, so this time I used angle iron for the trailing edge to keep everything lined up. Also used the new battery-operated drill for countersinking. Slow speeds really help with control.

The trim tab is starting to come together, although I did have some issues thanks to dimpling. See the photos for where the dimple die interfered with the bent tab at the end of the trim tab. Had to do some repairs, so back into the clamping blocks...

I also went off plans with standard rivets in place of the pop rivets on the plans. Hoping that there are no issues when it comes time to squeeze them (doubt there will be as long as I perform this operation before inserting some internal foam ribs). Also dimpled and primed the forward trim tab spar.

Hard to believe; however this was:

Total Time Today: 5 hours

April 12 -- Elevator Trim Tab

Posts have been sparse lately, thanks to work. Silence cloaked what activity did occur, and perhaps that is just as well.

Picked up a spare elevator trim tab skin while at Vans to get the wings. At the time it looked to be wasted money; however statistically an extra skin is a good investment.

Sure enough, the first attempt was a fiasco when I bent the tabs at the end. Issue was that I pranged the aluminum in every conceivable way while bending. Some (OK a LOT of) research online turned up that (a) the block recommended for forming the bend should be harder than pine, and (b) there is no such thing as "tight enough" when clamping the block down.

Fortunately(?) the mess known as our garage has some hard maple stock in it. Karin's childhood bed frame, to be precise. A piece of that maple made a great forming block, with more maple affixed to the sides of the wood to keep everything aligned. Then three screws in the bottom of the block served to clamp the assembly, and a humongous C Clamp worked on the other end. The genesis of this approach came from this page -- about halfway down.

That's a 10 degree angle in the maple, and I used a jointer to make certain all was super smooth. (The jointer is another bit of clutter in the garage.) The pieces tacked on the side don't quite touch the bottom of the block, in order to ensure that there was not any tilt induced by alignment issues. This setup took me 4+ hours to build, including time spent on some bad tries.

Some thoughts for others who may be reading this blog post as they consider their own construction project.

• Make certain that you clamp tightly and precisely. Bend the bottom tab first, then the top tab over the bottom. It's easy to miss in the instructions; however the bend line should intersect the middle of those "u" notches on the aluminum. Consider that the top bend will be over the bottom one, so make certain that the first one is spot on.
• Vans says to use a rivet gun to finish off the bend. I found that was a way to scar the aluminum. Besides, a block of maple and a hammer are all that are required.
• My bending brake (per Vans instructions) was made with wood from Home Depot. It was wet, green, and warped. Stuck it thru a planer to true it up, then left it on top of the table saw for a week. Result was a rusted table saw top, and wood that warped again. You can draw your own conclusion...
• That same brake will be used later for (longer) ailerons. Word is that I should have purchased wood long enough for a six-foot brake. I didn't, which is either good or bad, depending on your thoughts about the previous point.

Total Time: 10 hours (includes the bad trim tab not shown here)

Click on photos for a close-up view.

Mar 25 -- Pick up Wing Kit

Does this time count towards building hours? :)

Picked up the Wing kit at Van's Aircraft, just south of Portland, OR. Went down the previous afternoon via Amtrak (bullet train from London to Paris could teach these dudes a few things...). Next morning I rented a U-Haul and picked up the wings for the drive back to Seattle.

Will leave the U-Haul saga out of this (executive summary: U-Haul #FAIL), other than to say that as the photo indicates, there was not much inside the truck. Needed a 17 ft truck in order to accommodate some long pieces such as fuselage longerons.

Once home I inventoried the loot over the weekend. Came up with some errors on Van's part, so it definitely pays to spend the time looking thru the kit. Going to be a while before these parts get used: still need to finish the empennage, and the reality of business travel is also setting me back.

One great delay though: NASA invited me to a Shuttle launch in April. I'll be one of 100 people at a TweetUp. Can't wait!!!

Mar 5 -- Elevator Trim Tab

Lots of "enabling" work today.

Started by melting plastic off the outside skin of the elevator, then drilling and deburring both the skin and trim tab rib. Didn't even bother with clecos before match drilling, because when I lined parts up it was obvious that once again CNC had everything spot on.

But most of the time was a matter of cutting foam for ribs and also some wood for forming blocks. Once again the miter saw came in handy with its clean cuts. So did the table saw.

Total Time: Can you believe that I burned over 4 hours on this?

Feb 26 -- Rivet Left Elevator Bottom Skin

Technically this is two days, because a couple of days ago I riveted the gusset on to the rib. What a pain -- over an hour and about 6 drilled rivets later there were 2 installed rivets. Some fool posted on their site that out of 15,000+ rivets, they only drilled out 200 or so. Calling BS on that stat...

Today was just a bit of time on the plane. Riveted the bottom skin to the E-901 spar, then attached the Counterbalance assembly to the spar. This is the reverse order of the instructions, and works out better. One pair of rivets buried way down inside connects the counterbalance assembly directly to the spar. I used (gasp!) pop rivets. Out of site, just as strong, and the result is a much better grip than trying to get in there and buck a standard rivet.

Next up will be the trim tab spar. But I need to go heads down on work for a week or so, meaning that all progress will stop for now.

Total time: 1.5 hours

Feb 23 - Backrivet Lower Stiffeners, Install Trim Servo Reinforcement Plate

Tonight I installed the nutplates on the trim servo reinforcement plate, then installed the plate on the lower skin. Next up was backriveting stiffeners to the lower skin, with some NAPA gasket material behind them to dampen vibration that others report causes cracks in the skin.

Total Time: 2 hours

Feb 22 -- Re-do the Elevator Trim Mounting Plate

The first run at this plate didn't go so well: see the "before" version on the left in the photo below. In my attempt to counter sink the holes for nut plates, the countersink bit walked and ruined the piece by decorating it with ovals.

The replacement part showed up today. This time I enlarged the #40 pilot holes in the part, and then drilled #40 holes into hard maple, in order to provide a hole that would prevent the bit from walking. What a difference!

Stopped for the evening after counter-sinking, deburring, cleaning, painting, dimpling.

Total Time: 1 hour