Sunday, September 6, 2015

Fitting the trim tab - 6 hours



Another big day. I picked up by marking the material on the tab that needed to be removed. It amounts to about 1/16" maybe less. About the width of my dremel cut off wheel. I performed some delicate surgery and it was a success. I noticed that I had scuffed the skin when bending the long tab over so I scuffed the area up and re-primed the tab. Also by using the double sided 3m tape on the wood block, I had removed a little bit of primer in the trim tab. I scuffed and touched up those areas as well. 


While I was waiting for the primer to dry I moved on to the trim tab and the hinge. I match drilled the horn and I cut the hinge so the layout/orientation is exactly as the plans show. JUST enough hinge...Just. 



I then took a lunch break.
After a few hours of giving the primer time to dry, I then folded the last tab over. Perfection!



I then set off to work on the alignment of the trim tab and the hinge. This took a fair amount of time at least 1 1/2hours to set up. I used painters tape, clamps, etc. I used scrap material to ensure that I maintained the 3/32" clearance between the elevator and the trim tab. I fiddled with it a bunch...made sure that it was perfectly aligned along the trailing edge. i marked each hole as a reference guide. I then removed the hinge pin and clamped the one side of the hinge to the elevator. I very carefully started to match drill the holes and cleco as I went. I put everything back together....checked alignment again, and then repeated the process for the trim tab side of the hinge. Perfect!





It was getting late but I was on a roll so I decided to start dimpling the skins....I just did a few and then WHAM. I made a whoops!!! Oh crap! I was a little rambunctious with the pneumatic squeezer and mis-dimpled the aft-most hole for the CS4 that attaches the fiberglass tip. (It was a tricky spot do to the tight area) I sent Van's an email to see what options I have....CRAP!


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