Attached rudder
Julie and Adele went to Portland for the weekend, so I spent some “quality” time with the plane. I made the bushings for the push tube. I made sure they fit and then removed the push tube. I tried torquing down the jam nuts on the push tube bearings. I think they are AN6 nuts, which means quite a bit of torque (160 in-lbs min). I wasn’t able to hold the tube and apply that torque. I just tightened them down as best I could for now.
The next task was to attach the vertical stabilizer. I marked a line where the top of the longerons should be, centered up the VS, and clamped it down. After numerous measurements to make sure it was square with the horizontal stabilizer, I drilled the two holes into the up stop and temporarily installed bolts.
I next drilled the attach plate that holds the VS front spar to the HS. It took some weird maneuvering with the right angle attachment, but I finally got it drilled. I didn’t need a shim to keep the hinges lined up, but I did put the VS spar behind the attach plate.
Last step was to drill the bottom of the VS rear spar from the holes in the tie down I installed quite a while back. Getting at those holes was very tricky. I could drill the top two with a right angle attachment, but could only barely start the bottom two holes. I ended up taking the VS back off, drilling the holes to #30, reassembling, and then final drilling to #12.
In order to make enough room for the rudder, I lowered the tail quite a bit. Looks like a tail dragger like this.
From there I attached the rudder and adjusted the bearings. The counterweight was hitting the VS a tiny bit, so I backed out the top bearing slightly and cranked down the bottom bearing. The middle bearing needed a little tweaking as well. I fabricated the rudder stops exactly according to the plans, but I do not have very good clearance between the elevators and the rudder. It started at about 1/8″ on the right side. I cranked down the bottom bearing quite a bit and was able to squeeze out 1/2″ of clearance. The instructions say it should be 1-1/8″. I searched the archives and it seems that some people have no problem with the stops and others do. Strange. Not sure what to do about it yet.
Other than the minor problem with the rudder stops, it was a very productive day. The empennage is bascially fitted at this point. I can safely say that I’ve removed and installed each empennage part at least a half dozen times, and some parts (like the elevators and rudder) are up in the 20-30 range. Yikes!