Elevators
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4 October 2007 Section 9: The Elevator The elevator is proving to be a "Not as bad as it looked" section. Although the elevator looked complicated the redundancy of the the tasks previously learned is becoming routine and familiar. This is obvious as our first 12 hours appeared to be very productive. These shots basically show the project from the start of section 9 to step 9-7 (final drilling). One technique we wanted to highlight was the bending of the close out tabs. Rather than use the tradition blocks of wood for the bend we chose to use the back rivet plate and rubber mallet and it appears to have been bent at a near perfect angle. Since Thursday night at Silver Wings is the aero club social meeting evening it was brought to our attention that the priming methodology was not fully answered and so we are compelled to answer that here. If you notice in the photos posted on the website you can see we are priming where we have metal to metal mating areas. We chose to use a rattle cans of NAPA Zinc Chromate primer (as indicated in section 7) which acts as a sacrificial material so it will preserve those areas longer by having its surface destroyed prior to the aluminum corrosion occurs. We are only spraying the areas where we think regular visual inspections cannot occur due to the areas being closed or bond to other sections. Is this a good idea? There seems to be much debate here but my previous flight experience tells me I'd rather keep the weight of the aircraft lower and have more weight for gas, avionics, survival gear, etc. We previously owned an older 182 and found that corrosion was a minor issue at times but it was always treatable and it was rare over the life of the aircraft. We believe this is right choice for the environment we plan to operate, inspect and base the aircraft. We hope to head back out today for about 5 more hours. Overall we are pleased with our progress and hope we keep the pace. In fact we are already realizing that the kit is coming together faster than anticipated. This dynamic is causing some interesting thoughts. The plan was to order the fuselage and wings just prior to the 31 Dec. Primarily to beat the modest price increase to get into effect 1 Jan 08. But the plane is coming together faster than we thought and looks like we will order the fuselage and wings sometime over the next few weeks. Wow! If you look down the road this means space issues are going to become a problem. Will Silver Wings allow me to expand to more space in the middle of winter? It also means the engine and prop will have to be ordered faster which means there will be financial management issues unless you recent hit the lottery. Teresa and I had thought this out but our success has now reshaped the plan...things to consider. Back to the routine: Now that the elevators are pieced together...we take it all a part.
9 October 2007 Section 9 The Elevator (continued) As we continued to dismantle the elevators, final drill, rivet the rear and then the front spar we were plagued with numerous small errors that required drillouts, re-riveting, and sometimes just a pause at the drawings to make sure we were on track. This section does not appear to be overly difficult but I have to say that we are struggling a bit more here than at anytime with the rest of the empennage. However even with that said we are having fun and often find many of the Thursday night Auburn Aero-clubbers coming over to watch, help out and learn...maybe this RV thing is catching on. Of course its always fun tp brag about building an RV-10, sometimes we take it a bit too far...ok mostly me. |
Documentation
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