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Stevens Web Site
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Date: 10-13-2007
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Number of Hours: 3.50
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Manual Reference:
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Brief Description: Drilled horizontal stabilizer to the fuselage
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Today was the big day, when I finally got to attach a flying surface to the fuselage. Patrick was sleeping in late, so I called Sam Beale and he said he would come over to the shop once he satisifed some familial duties. He was taking his wife and granddaughter to Stone Mountain Park for some kind of festival. I went down into the shop and jiggled and measured until I thought everything was straight and level. Later, Patrick woke up and came down into the shop to apply his mechanical engineering eye to the puzzle. We remeasured everything, adjusted some clamps and then everything looked good. I still waited until Sam came by for the drilling, however, since he was gracious enough to volunteer to check my work. Well, Sam came by in the afternoon with his wife and his granddaughter. I had both an engineer and a studio audience. Sam helped me recheck everything and we were ready to drill. The photos show that we had everything leveled to exactly 0.0 degrees. Then, I drilled the forward horizontal stabilizer spar to the fuselage. Everything looked good until we drilled the last hole, which wound up much too close to the spar web for us to put a bolt into. Uh, Oh. We then decided that we could drill another hole right next to it in the proper place (with the proper edge distance). Once we drilled that hole, however, we saw that the hole came through the reinforcing angle inside the fuselage way too close to its edge (insuring that it would crack out later). Caramba! After much wailing and nashing of teeth, I saw that the reinforcing angle (part no. F-810C in the plans) was not wide enough to accomodate that hole. Although I fabricated that part as per the drawings, it needed to be a full 1/4" wider. The only fix is to drill out the F-810C fron the innards of the fuselage, fabricate a new F-801C (this one wide enough to accomodate the hole) and then drill it and rivet it back into the fuselage. My brain hurts, I am going to bed.
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Horizontal stabilizer spars (fwd on left, aft on right) all level on the fuselage
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Fuselage longerons are level fore and aft
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Longerons at mid cabin, level side to side
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