Elevator and HS tips

25 Sep 2004 Elevator and HS tips

Started working on the elevator and horizontal stabilizer tips. They are plastic, and I had originally planned to do all my plastic at once, at the end, but since the fiberglass work needs some warmth, I decided to do it now before winter gets here. Of course, compared to most places, it seems like winter is already here. My shop is down to 15c, and the outside temperature today was all the way up to 12c. Nippy!

I just received a bunch of stuff from ACS to do my fiberglass work. I had no idea what to purchase, but I found a couple of good articles referred to at Dan’s excellent http://www.rvproject.com/ site, and he had lists of stuff to buy. I just bought it all.

Of course, the hardener for the epoxy is a “hazmat”, so I had to buy that locally, for triple the normal price. On top of that, the West System pumps I bought don’t work on the “European” West System hardener. It’s clearly stuff made in Germany, not the stuff they make in the US. I guess it is some kind of nasty chemical.

HS tip initial fit, looks like it will need a bit of trimming.

Notice the inch or two that I had to trim on the HS. This kind of had me worried for a minute, since the part I trimmed exactly matched the additional length of the HS tip. Then I remembered that Van’s changed the way the weights are put on the elevators, allowing them to reduce the total weight by increasing the length. Phew, thought I had goofed.

First thing I did was to mark the holes, drill them through the aluminium, and then come back and drill through the tips. Worked fine. Here’s a picture right as I began to drill through the tips. Everyone says that you should use “throwaway” bits on the fiberglass, since it seems to quickly dull bits. I used some *very* cheap metric bits I had laying around that came free with some other cheap Chinese screwdriver bits.

Here’s one of the “prove you built the thing” shots.

All finished drilling. Next I need to glue some 0.020 inch thick strips inside the tips so the pop rivets will hold better. Then I’ll drill out to a size 30 bit, countersink, and rivet these things on. Then the fun of trying to make them look decent begins. That will require the fiberglass stuff I bought at Aircraft Spruce.

Update: 26 September 2004 18:00

Here I’ve glued some 0.020 inch strengtheners on the top rudder tip using a type of epoxy that dries *too* fast. These will help make sure the CS4-4 pop rivets don’t pull through the fiberglass.

Here are the rest of the strips ready to be installed on the HS and the elevators. Got called back for dinner, so I didn’t get to finish them. I’ll try JB Weld since it seems to dry a bit slower than the other stuff. It was hard in 5 minutes!