Elevator rigging done(ish)

Picked up again with my airplane yoga routine this evening. First up was undoing the tedious work from last night, removing the bellcrank pivot bolt and the washers on one side. This was so I could move one washer to the left side (of the airplane) to provide some more clearance between the bellcrank and the forward servo mount bolt. After weaseling the washers back in place and getting the bolt threaded through, I verified that the bellcrank was now clear (on both sides) before adding a fresh lock nut and torquing things (again).

So now I’ve got the clearance I needed, and the bellcrank moves smoothly through its full range of motion:

Next was adding the aft push tube, between the bellcrank and the elevator horns – one last trip in and out of the tail (for now, at least), followed by hooking up the elevators. For this last bit, unlike everything else for this rigging – where I used fresh lock nuts and assumed this was a final (hopefully) installation, I left this un-torqued. I figure there’s a good chance the elevators will come on and off a few times as I’m working on the fiberglass tips, so I’m holding off on “final” installation here.

Here’s a look down the tailbone with he push tube installed:

OK…what next? I’m still waiting on the hardware from Spruce to attach the vertical stab, though it should be here tomorrow. I thought about working on trimming the control sticks, but for that I’d want to basically install the entire interior, and I didn’t really feel like that tonight. Instead I decided to at least look a bit at the fiberglass work, starting with one of the horizontal stab tips.

The first bit of fun with these is that their profile doesn’t really match the stab itself; it won’t sit flush along the flange, which is a problem for fitting:

My first attempt at helping with this was to trace the stab profile onto a piece of scrap wood and cut it to fit; I was hoping to wedge this inside the tip to press it in place:

So far, this helps, but it’s not quite right; I probably need to refine it a bit more, specifically removing more material around the perimeter to account for the thickness of the fiberglass tip. I thought maybe it could just sit a bit further aft and do its job, but a trial fit showed that wasn’t the case.

In any case, I need to get some more supplies before I really go to town on fiberglass, most notably a good supply of sandpaper, since there will be lots of sanding in my future. So no real hurry on getting this figured out, I guess – which is why I called it a (short) night at this point.

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