Today was a little frustrating. I decided to try and tackle mounting the electric trim servo brackets to the trim access panel. According to the plans, the inboard edge of the left bracket should line up with 1 3/8″ from the out board edge of the access panel. I found out the hard way that…

Not much today, but every little bit is that much closer. Match drilled the left elevator and the disassembled both elevators to get ready for deburring, dimpling, countersinking and priming.

Good lawd! I really gotta stop with these long breaks from building. I really caught the big to get back to work on it though. Hopefully, I’ll have the empennage wrapped up (other that fiberglass tip work which I’ll do later on) by July. Tonight, I had an hour to kill, so I got the…

Match drilled the counterweights and counterweight skin to the counterweight rib assembly. They turned out alright, but if I did it over, I would start the holes in the counterweights (I.e., drill about 1/8″ in) and then finish them on the drill press. It’s very important to drill these straight as possible. I have one…

After a nice long hiatus due to some music commitments and the holidays, I am finally back at it. Today, I match drilled the spar reinforcement plates to the spar, deburred and fluted the countersink ribs and outboard end ribs and final drilled them to the spar. I decided to work on both the left…

Today, I built a bending brake out of a 2×8 and some hinges and put the final bends in the trailing edges. It was a pretty uneventful process. I had to push a lot harder than I though I would. The Brake: The goal is to have no taper in the bend prior to the…

I managed to get all the stiffeners and trim servo access panel/stiffener riveted onto the left skin. The aft most rivets were a pain. You can get to them with the rivet gun, but you really need 3 hands. One extra to peel the skin back. I clamped the skin to the table, put both…

Finally, got back to work on the project today after a brief hiatus. Today, Leza and I dimpled the elevator skins.