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Bills RV-7 Build Site
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Date: 7-10-2013
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Number of Hours: 3.00
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Manual Reference: 6-13
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Brief Description: Finished elevators, tail is complete!
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Tonight I finished the elevators. This meant mounting each one on the horizontal stabilizer with bolts which seem impossible to insert given the limited space, but I used a suggestion from the forum and bought some 6" curved forceps at Radio Shack today and those worked OK with a bit of practice. I made up a bolt holder tool that I had seen on a tool supplier site, which held the bolt nicely but was too wide for the opening, though it occurred to me on the way home that the opening would have been bigger if the elevators had been at an angle to the HS instead of flat on the tabletop.
Anyway, after each elevator was mounted I marked the skin above the counterweight for trimming, then removed the elevator to make the trim, then reinstalled the elevator to check the up and down travel, then marked the bottom flange of the HS spar for how much I needed to trim away to get sufficient "down" travel, then drilled the hinge bolt hole in the elevator horn using a 12" bit and a drill bushing purchased from McMaster-Carr, then removed the elevator, trimmed the spar flane as marked and drilled the horn home. All this for each of the two elevators, then reinstalled the elevators a 3rd time to make sure everything lined up right.
Whew!! This completes the tail components until I am ready to install them on the fuselage, wich is quite a ways off. Next step is to begin work on the wings, but I will have to reconfigure the hangar shop a bit and hang another light or two before I can start that.
On the way home it absolutely poured buckets of rain, the kind where you can hardly see, for at least 20 minutes. What a mess!!
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HS skin maked and drilled for trimming
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HS Spar trimmed (1/4") to provide horn clearance
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Down travel came in at 26 degrees
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