2/13/2021 – 0.7 hours
It is time to match drill the left elevator closeout tabs by the trim tab area. One item of note is how the upper and lower closeout tabs and the shear clip stack in the build. The upper closeout tab sits over the lower closeout tab, and the shear clip is inboard of the closeout tabs. If you look from inboard to outboard, you will have the shear clip, upper tab and lower tab in that order. Prior to clecoing the trailing edge into place, one of the foam ribs was taped just inside of the lower closeout tab to help maintain the overall shape. The match drilling starts with the aft hole in the upper tab, and moves forward to the 2 holes in the shear clip. Access to the front hole through the shear clip is very limited, so I used a 12” #30 drill bit for that one. I then cleco'd the elevator control horns in place, and final drilled the holes common to the inboard ribs and forward spars.
[#30 Drill, 12” #30 Drill]
2/14/2021 – 4.9 hours
It is always fun to cleco pieces together and create a mockup of the final assembly, but eventually all the pieces need to be disassembled and prepared for final assembly. During the disassembly process, I marked the left and right elevator pieces to ensure they would go back together the same way they were mocked up and match/final drilled. There are a lot of parts for the elvators, and I took the opportunity to debur all the holes and edges as the pieces came off the assembly.
2/15/2021 – 6.5 hours
2/16/2021 – 1.4 hours
2/17/2021 – 1.4 hours
The process of disassembling and deburring the left and right elevator parts continued until all the parts were separated and ready for priming and final assembly. After completing the prep work on the skeleton parts, I turned my attention to dimpling the counterbalance and elevator skins. I dimpled the counterbalance skins with the pneumatic squeezer, and dimpled the elevator skins with the 22” C-Frame. One item to note is the trailing edge of the elevator skins are pre-bent to the shape of the wedges that will be inserted there. A normal-sized dimple die is too large to dimple this area and not ruin the bend, but I found a reduced diameter dimple die worked perfectly with the edge of the die tangent to the bend. The other item to note is the most outboard holes on the elevator skins are not dimpled – they will be used later for the fiberglass elevator tips.
[Pneumatic Squeezer, 22” C-Frame Dimpler, 3/32” Standard Dimple Die, 3/32” Reduced Diameter Dimple Die]
2/24/2021 – 1.5 hours
The final step for this section was to countersink the trailing edges. One of the lessons I took from countersinking the trailing edge wedge for the rudder is that the wedge may not be thick enough for a full .007” beyond flush countersink on both sides without enlarging the hole. I had a spar piece of the elevator wedge that I trimmed off stock piece earlier, so I slowly adjusted my countersink depth on that piece until I found the depth that would accept the dimpled skin without going too deep. It turns out the elevator TE wedge, which is thicker than the wedge for the rudder, can handle the 0.007” beyond flush countersink, and that mates really well with the dimpled skin.
[Microstop Countersink Cage, 3/32” Countersink Cutter, Trailing Edge Wedge Drill Jig]