MIKE HOWE'S RV7 CONSTRUCTION LEFT ELEVATOR
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Important notice: After finishing the left elevator and much agonizing I decided the first one pictured here was just not acceptable. I will point out the steps where I started to get in trouble and what I plan to do on the second one. My biggest problem was not paying attention to the stiffener locations and bending the tabs on the trim and elevator where you need a straight bend line. Thanks to the people on the Yahoo discussion group who have offered various solutions and I will point out procedures I changed on building the second one that I just ordered. Click here to see any changes on second build

December 12, 2001

Cleco the E-602PP Spar and the E-615 PP reinforcement plate to the left elevator skin

Cleco the E-602PP Spar and the E-615 PP reinforcement plate to the left elevator skin

December 12, 2001

Draw a line along the leading edge of the E-602 spar that will be used in placement of stiffeners, they will end 1/8" from the spar as per the drawing.

Draw a line along the leading edge of the E-602 spar

December 12, 2001

After getting off to a couple of false starts on drilling the hole in the stiffeners backed up and laid them out on the plan to think about it awhile. You  need to be care because the left and right elevator use different measurements, and I am still a little confused over the rivet spacing.  I'm going to cut each one individually until I see the big picture a little better and use a template to drill all the holes, it is no fun to do that and find out you made a mistake on all of them. Check plans to see lengths, they start at 5/16ths" from the trailing edge and go to 1/8th in from the spar.

Click here for PDF enlargement

Laying out stiffeners on the bottom left elevator.

December 12, 2001

Just like the rudder stiffeners cut the taper from a point 6 inches to the taper at the small end. I then used that as a template to mark the next one. Smoothed on 3M wheel and used emery cloth to finish.

Click here for PDF enlargement

Cut taper

December 12, 2001

I got a couple of new tools from Avery today. One is a rivet fan you can expand out and the top holes are equally spaced to different distance from some alignment marks on the bottom, works great. Also the little pen holder tool you can mark the center of the stiffeners or ribs, would have been handy back when trying to draw center lines on ribs on VS and HS. It also works great. Also got the black rule with white marks, is much easier for me to see marks.

December 12, 2001

Used previously cut stiffener as template to mark taper and holes (which were set at 1 2" spacing from the trailing edge hole which was in 3/4" from the trailing edge.

Marking and cutting stiffeners

December 12, 2001

Marking the stiffeners to be cut at 1/8th" behind the spar after the taper is cut and hole drilled. Also numbering them RB1,RB2,etc

Mark Stiffener Length

December 12, 2001

I need to regroup here a bit and will get some more pictures going soon. I guess the inevitable happened and just like when you buy a new car and never want to get a scratch in it, you know you will go to the parking lot one day and see it in a altercation with a shopping cart some fool  let run into it, and there is a big scratch in your new pride and joy. I guess it is good that it happened, then you don't have to worry about the first scratch again. Well after carefully measuring the stiffeners several times, I proceeded to drill them to the wrong side of the line, so the first scratch has occurred and I won't have to worry about it anymore. When everyone starts,  I suppose they imagine a completed airplane with no mistakes and I knew that was unrealistic. I  hope  I start to developing  a sense of being able to judge what is not  airworthy or just ugly, I think we builders will all do that as your experience progresses. What is acceptable for some, may not be for others, but the bottom line, is it safe. I have a few holes in the skin in the wrong place, but I caught it before I had drilled to many and think I have a way to fix it and will supply the pictures when I get going again.

I have just loaned out my copy of "Illusions" to a friend yesterday, and I needed to consult it, but have just loaned it to a friend. One of the little saying popped into my head from it , something like There is no such thing as a problem without a gift in its hand for us, therefore we seek problems, for we need their gifts. Indeed what is perceived as good or bad is a matter of perception, there is a lesson to be learned here. It was late and I was tried, just put things down and let some time pass and go back and look at it when I am fresh again.

Mistake #1 

I put in a couple of extra rows of rivet to fill holes

Click to see PDF Enlargement

Finished the left elevator stiffeners and getting ready to have a look at the right

Finish Left elevator stiffeners

Bent trailing edge with the crunch machine, I did not put a dowel in this time and the bend turned out nice and uniform. One of the things I am not to clear on is the details of the reinforcement plate. The film just says back rivet it to the skin and the plate nuts can be done at any time. I tried a plate nut, the plan shows as a K-1100-6 and a screw which is AN-507-6R6 and it is extremely tight and won't go in the plate nut hole all the way. I am going to post to the Yahoo RV-7  group to see if anyone has any suggestions.

Bend trailing edge

Mark and drill holes in E-604, make sure they are close enough to the flange so the rivet heads will fit under the recesses in the counterweight.

See PDF enlargement

Mark and drill E-604

Cleco the E-603 to the E-604 and use cleco side grips and skin to align using the forward tooling hole as a reference.

Click here to see PDF enlargement

Back drill the E-604 and E-603