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Kupe's Zodiac 650B
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Date:  5-6-2014
Number of Hours:  1.00
Manual Reference:  6-S-4
Brief Description:  Horizontal Stabilizer Attach

In preparation for trimming the aft edge of the rear top skin, I fit the horizontal stabilizer to its mounts on the fuselage. This task, at first, seemed somewhat daunting as I needed to place an 8-foot-long wing section against 4 attach points and make sure that the stabilizer was:

1. Level from left to right with respect to the seat back cross bar (and wing center spar for that matter!)
2. Level with regard to the upper fuselage longeron - a zero angle of incidence in aero terms.
3. Perfectly perpendicular to the firewall/wing spar/seat back - no twist around the yaw axis.

I hadn't touched the horizontal tail in just over 1 year when I pulled it down from the shelf in the basement where I stored it and toted it up to the garage. I remember when I was building the stabilizer I couldn't imagine how those attach points would work. Well I know now.

First, I clamped a piece of L-extrusion onto the right end of the stabilizer in line with the reference holes alread there. After removing the rear top skin, and checking the fuselage level (yet again) I placed the stabilizer into the mounting brackets cleacoed to the top of the horizontal tail frame area of the fuselage. Everything slid into place and fit fairly snugly - that was encouraging. I then proceeded to check all three dimensions for accuracy. The first measurements showed all three dimensions to be within 0.5 degrees and the angle of incidence was only 0.1 degrees off. After about 15 minutes of nudging, checking, and re-checking I had all 4 attach points clamped into place. After that, I was a simple matter of drilling out the 4 attach points and voila! The horizontal tail is attached (clecoed, actually).
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Angle of incidence 0.0.  Note the extrusion clamped to the stabilizer to hold the level.

Angle of incidence 0.0. Note the extrusion clamped to the stabilizer to hold the level.

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First cut at measuring

First cut at measuring "twist." Before I drilled, I checked with a tape measure: 12 ft, 11 1/4" each.

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Horizontal tail clecoed in place.

Horizontal tail clecoed in place.

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