Brief Description: Adjusting elevator hinge and fitting tail
What a frustrating day today was. I got a reply from kerry at sonex about the elevator down travel and skin trimming so I came home from work thinking I was just going to deburr the elevator hinge and mount it. I decided to start by testing the tail travel. The down angle was only at around 15 degrees so I started filing stome of the horn off but was not getting much results. Out of fear of making the control horn to thin, I decided to remount a new hinge to the rear of the stab but this time I was going to place the hinge center line out a little further. The pictures below show my result. I still had to do a small amount of filing but I can now get 20 degrees down, but now I am paranoid that my hinge is too far out since the plan says that the hinge center line should be centered on the back edge of the spar channel/skin. I am going to write Kerry again at sonex and ask him his opinion. I figure I have 3 choices:
1. Go back to my old hinge placement that was with the center of the hinge and file more off the horn.
2. Leave it as is and move on.
3. Attempt a new hinge all together that might be a happy medium, and a little more filing.
We will see what the jury has to say about it. For the record I would imagine it is fine the way it is, there seems to be PLENTY of strength in these hinges.
New hinge location further aft
Underside of hinge and horn final file
Just another view of the underside of the elevator and horn
