April 2, 2020
Now that the stiffeners are behind us, the next step is building both elevator skeletons. The right elevator is pretty simple, the left elevator includes a cut out for the trim tab and mounting for the trim servo. Paul prepped the trim servo reinforcement plate for the left elevator, primed it and riveted it in place. Nothing majorly difficult about this, but it’s not called out in the instructions at all we just kind of forgot about it until we were getting ready to prime the elevator for the stiffeners. Now seemed like as good a time as any to install it.
Today also included screw up #3, or #4, I don’t remember the count anymore. While prepping the right side counterbalance skin, the instructions say to drill out the holes to #12 for the counterweights. Not sure what was happening, but instead of drilling to a #12 bit size (for a #10 screw), we drilled it out for a #12 screw. It ended up being about .030″ oversized. Van’s said it would be fine to just put #12 screws in there, but these are visible screws on the outside of the elevators so we went ahead and reordered the 3 pieces that got messed up (E-703, E-704, and E-713). Putting in #12 screws would mean the heads would be different sizes between the left and right elevators (unless we drilled up the other side too). So now we wait for a couple more parts to arrive, this puts us up to 5 total parts replaced.
The instructions say to use the counterweight skin E-713 holes as drill guides to go through the counterweight and through ribs E-703 and E-704. This looked impossible to do accurately by completely by hand, so Paul drilled through E-713 with a hand drill and went just deep enough to leave a mark in the counterweight. We then took the lead counterweight out, drilled straight through it on the drill press, and re-installed it. With the holes lined up in E-713 and the counterweight as a guide it was easy to punch through E-703 and E-704.
It also took a really long time using a hacksaw and files to shape the right side counterweight into the shape called out on the drawing. The right side weight is shipped identical to the left, but it needs a lot of weight taken out of it due to the asymmetry between the elevators. It came out well, but probably took over an hour just to get it shaped up. Make sure to use gloves and a mask when you’re working with lead.
-Paul
(Total Build Time: 107.0 hrs)