Lindy
1/18/2010
I have had a cold for the past three and a half weeks, and this past weekend was the worst of it. I left the house one time on Saturday...the rest of the weekend I was relaxing on the couch or sleeping. Blah. I've lost my voice, but I do feel better today, so I went ahead and put in a session on the airplane tonight. Probably shouldn't have...we'll see.
Before I started working on moving forward tonight, I took a step backward. The work I did on Friday (the last time I worked), was done one day too soon. Why? Well, my buddy Darwin called me on Saturday morning. He and another guy, Jason Krause, have started a company called JD Air. They are coming out with several aftermarket parts for RV's, and one of those parts happens to be a steering link, much like the Silver Bullet link that was/is popular. The problem with the Silver Bullet, is the S L O W response to getting the product, IF you ever get it. So to make a long story short, and to spare the entire conversation, Darwin lightly twisted my arm, and talked me in to ordering one of the new links. So my step backward was to remove the Tail Lynx springs that I had just installed. I did sell them on VAF really cheap since they were already drilled, but they'll work fine for the guy that bought them.
Anyway, after that I started working on rigging the controls. Actually, this was more of a re-check of the pre-rigging I did back when I first fit the wings to the fuselage in my garage. Seems as though I did it right the first time, because with the elevator clamped neutral...
...the control stick was still perfectly straight up 90 degrees (the fuselage deck angle was 10.3, and the stick was 79.7), and the ailerons were clamped to their neutral spot (as measured when I installed them).
You'll notice though that the right aileron is a bit low (about a sixteenth). Here's why...
There is a bow in the trailing edge of the right wingtip, and the outer edge is actually in line with the neutral position of the aileron.
I then hooked up the flaps, and made sure they still matched up with the ailerons. I don't know why I didn't take a pic of that, but they do (see my log entries from August 2007). I'm still not totally pleased with the way the flap meets the fuselage, but I'm not sure there is much I can do about that. Gotta consult some of the local builders for that...It was nice, however, to run the flaps up and down manually. Man they work good! And they won't fail!
Satisfied with all that for now, I moved back to the empennage fairing. This is something I've been dreading because so many of these don't fit properly out of the box. The first thing I had to do in order to have a look at what I have to work with, was to cut some material from the aft portion that sticks down to cover the elevator horns. There needs to be at least a 1/4" of clearance here, so I still have some trimming to do.
Much to my TOTAL surprise, this thing actually fits REALLY close as it came from Van's! With some light pressure on the leading edge, it sits nicely on this side...
...and the same can be said for the right side too! I did have to do some sanding where the fairing meets the leading edge of the VS thought. You can see it in this pic below that it was a bit thick there.
I then removed the fairing to make some marks to assist in finding the holes that were previously left undrilled when I built the tail, and also to drill out three rivets on each side that didn't need to be set in the first place (arrows).
Then I taped it down as tight as I could with good 'ol duct tape and started drilling.
Starting at the front, I worked my way back, and side to side until I had all the holes drilled.
I am going to trim some material from the top of the fairing above the screws, but I'll taper the trim to meet the leading edge of the VS where that is fitting very nicely.
The one thing I'm a little pissed about is the forward most screw. It's not perfectly centered, and all it would've taken was another minute or so to check and make sure, but I drilled it before I checked, and it's off by about an eighth. Not a big deal, but it's something so stupid simple, that it makes me mad that I didn't check it. Oh well...
Overall I was extremely pleased with this evening's work. I was really worried about that emp fairing...
2.5 hours