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[March 18, 2008]


I needed to drill the horns of the elevator to the bearing in the center of the horizontal stabilizer. I used a clamp out the outboard end to hold the elevator in trail with the h-stab.


I used a bushing I bought at McMaster-Carr that had a 1/4" outer diameter and #40 inner diameter. I placed the bushing in the bearing and backdrilled each horn with a #40 drill.


Using a unibit and a 1/4" reamer, I enlarged the hold on each elevator horn for a AN4 bolt.


Next was drilling the hold where the pushrod connects to the elevators. The horns typically aren't aligned with each other, as Van's cautions in the manual. The left horn was more aft than the right one.


I pre-drilled a #30 hole on the left horn at the called out location.


I then took some wood sandwiched between two pieces of sheet aluminum to drill a perpendicular drill guide.


Using this drill guide, I backdrilled the #30 hole in the right elevator horn.


I then enlarged both holes to #12 for a AN3 bolt.


Next up was fabricating up the F-798 spacers that go between the bottom of the front spar of the h-stab and the fuselage.


I them played around with the alignment of the h-stab on the fuselage. I ran some tape measures from common points on the fuselage to see what I needed to do to make the h-stab perpendicular the fuselage. This was a good point to stop tonight. Hopefully tomorrow I can drill the h-stab to the fuselage.

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Last Modified: August 13, 2023