I have spent an incredible amount of time this
past two weeks working on the elevator halves of the Comet Sailplane and I
am not through yet. However, tomorrow Sue has us scheduled to take down the
Christmas tree, lights and all of our decorations and put them away up in
the attic for one more year. Friday and Saturday we will give our home a
complete and thorough "deep" cleaning! :O< Then on January the 5th, I will
have cataract surgery on my right eye followed by surgery on the left eye on
January 29th.
So this afternoon I have to get the model room
cleaned up and the Sailplane stab put away for a while. I did want to update
you guys on my stab/elevator work in progress. Remember back on the December
11th in Report No. 17, I separated the elevator portion of the stab as shown
below.
After cutting the elevator portion in half, I was
left with an elevator half as shown below.
Accounting for the widths of the stab and
elevator spars as well as width of the hinges, I cut off the leading edges
of all of the elevator ribs as shown below.
Next I installed a new 1/4" elevator leading edge
as shown below.
Once the gap of root rib was established, I glued
in the root rib as shown below.
Next I installed the Klett hinges in the stab and
elevator halves. The hinges on left side of the stab trailing edge are shown
below along with .031" hinge piano wire.
I went through a very frustrating and extremely
difficult time getting each of the elevator halves properly aligned with the
cut outs in the stab. I will just leave it at that because I am not sure I
even have the ability to describe what all I had to go through to accomplish
this task. However, the bottom line is shown in the picture below with the
elevator halves installed and hinged in the stab cut outs.
This shows the left side of the stab. The stab
tip and the left side of the leading and trailing edges have been contoured
and sanded to shape. I just haven't had the time to do the right side yet.
This is a close up attempting to show the gapped
interface of the left elevator halve in the stab cut out.
This picture of the bottom of the stab was taken
to show the elevator's control horn that is mounted on a spruce block that
also contains a brass tube for 1/16" piano wire elevator connector to slide
into.
This last picture shows the entire bottom of the
left side of the stab.
So at this point, I will have to discontinue work
on the Sailplane because of all of the up and coming
events.............................Tandy