May 12th, 2001
Fun with corporate downsizing. Looks like the sagging economy has managed to hit Yours Truely, so instead of building an airplane, I've been building a resume. Being out of a job is nothing new to an IT professional, but it is certainly most inconvenient, and will no doubt cut into my airplane building time. I've still got several hours of work left to go on the tail before I have to worry about any more outlay of cash, but that time is approaching, and I hope that i'll be ready to buy when I'm ready to, well you know, buy...
Anyway, enough of the disaster that is my work life. I did indeed get a little work done on the plane. If you remember, I managed to munge up the tip rib for the stabilizer, and had to order another one. In the mean time, I put the stabilizer aside and got to work on the elevator. First order of business was to build the "center channel" section of the elevator. This will eventually be where the slot is cut to clear the rudder.
The center channel is comprised of two of the six elevator ribs and the short center spar piece. This closes off the area that will eventually be cut out. There is no real "spar" to the elevator, but the skin is bent at the rear into a C channel, and this give the part the rigidity it needs.
Anyway, got done with that part and the tip rib arrived, so I went back to work on that. This time around, I had the skin already attached to the stabilizer frame, so I was able to triple check that the rib was positioned correctly before I drilled it through.
Once that was done, I wrapped the skin back around the top to check for fit. Things look alot better this time around.
As you can see, the skin still doesn't quite reach the end of the spar lip in the center, but does at the ends. This is another product of the bend in the spar created by the outer middle ribs not sitting on the spar doublers, thus bowing them in. I'll have to measure the contraption in the middle to ensure that I don't violate edge distances when I go to attach the elevator hinge.
Next Day