Empennage

I had a good productive day on the project today. I continued to work on the Trim Tab and started today by clamping the E-721 hinge to the top flange of E-607PP. I marked the inboard edge of the hinge where it aligned with the trim tab skin and spar. Then I drilled the holes in the skin, spar and hinge where they were all aligned. At that point I disassembled the trim tab and did some countersinking on the top of the spar and dimpled the bottom flange of the E-607PP spar. I had a small amount of material to remove from the hinge and then prepared all the parts by edge finishing, deburring, and dimpling.

Next, I clecoed the trim tab back together and riveted the bottom of the skin to the bottom flange of the spar and attached the E-717 and E-718. Then I clmaped the hinge to the upper flange of the E-606PP and the aft edge of the E-701-L elevator skin. Donna was helping with the next step where I had to adjust the hinge on the elevator so that the inboard and trailing edges of the trim tab were aligned with the corresponding edges on the elevator. The trailing edge is more critical and we used a long straight edge to aid in the aligning of the trailing edge. With everything aligned I drilled and clecoed the forward portion of the hinge using the holes in the skin and spar as a guide. Then I marked the inboard edge of the skin on the hinge. Then I removed the E-721 hinge and trimmed the inboard end to match the inboard edge of the E-701-L skin.

After that I clecoed the the tab hinge and trim tab onto the elevator. At this point the plans call for you to sight down the trailing edge and make adjustments. Fortunately I thought it looked extremely straight and didn't need any adjustments. With Donna holding it straight I drilled the folded ends of the inboard tabs and put in a couple of clecos. I removed the trim tab from the elevator and while carefully maintaining the alignment we set the rivets on the top of the trim tab. With that done I set the blind rivets in the ends of the trim tab and checked the alignment again to make sure that these didn't interfere with the rivets in the inboard tabs of the elevator. After that we finished the Trim Tab by riveting the forward half of the E-721 hinge to the elevator.

The plans say to install and bend the trim tab hinge pin and secure it to the E-606PP spar. Then they tell you that the pin they have supplied is too short to do this now. I'll be recieveing longer pins with the fuselage kit. Also, the space between the trim tab and elevator tabs is a minimum of 3/32". Measured, the distance on mine is right at 4/32".

6 Hours

Total hours on project = 162