Elevators 9-6-1 to 9-7-8
Continuing on with assembling the elevators, I deburred the edges of the trim access reinforcement plates and clecoed them into the elevators. There was no need to final size the holes.
I also deburred and attached the elevator gussets and clecoed them to the root ribs and the rear spar. There was no need to adjust the angles of the gussets to fit, but I did have to final drill the 4 holes in the gussets and matching holes in the spar and rib from #40 to #30.
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| Reinforcement plates and gussets attached prior to final drilling |
Next, I attached the two remaining shear clips to the rear spars, and the assembled tip ribs to the elevators. The E-904 rib rests inside the front spar, with the counterbalance skin resting over the front spar, and the elevator skin over the counterbalance skin.
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| Tip rib attached to the elevator prior to attaching the top skin |
With the elevator skeleton fully assembled, I proceeded to cleco the top skins in place. No issues here and the skin close out tabs fit together perfectly!
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| Elevator top skins clecoed in place |
I finished for the evening by clecoing the trailing edge wedge in place and marking the ends that need to be cut. The single VA-140 trailing edge wedge is precisely long enough to form two trailing edge wedges for both elevators.
The following evening I cut both elevator trailing edge wedges to size using the band saw, and trimmed them to fit using the bench grinder. I then labeled them and clecoed both wedges in place.
Next I match drilled the holes holding the shear clip to the inner close out tabs. This was easy enough, but I used my 12" #30 bit to get a better angle on the innermost hole next to the rear spar.
I figured that when I dimple the holes, they will get slightly enlarged (by the very nature of dimpling), and that way any holes that don't perfectly line up right now will line up more easily after dimpling, with enough room to let a rivet drop through.
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| Trailing edge wedge cut and attached, and holes match drilled in the close out tabs |
I then match drilled and final sized the holes connecting the left and right elevator horns to the front spars and root ribs on each elevator. Again, very straightforward.
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| Elevator horn holes being upsized |
Now it was that time in the instructions where I was supposed to final drill all the holes from skin to structure. As all the holes were already final sized I decided to trim down this step, and for the majority of the holes I did not do any final drilling. The only holes I ended up final drilling were
- the trailing edge wedge holes, as they need to be drilled perpendicular to the elevator chord
- the 29 holes that will be countersunk in the top rear spar flange, only as needed if the reamer did not fit
I decided not to drill the remainder of the holes (even if the reamer did not quite fit through after lining them up) because any additional reaming would have enlarged some of these holes beyond the final size.
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| Trailing edge and rear spar (soon to be) countersunk holes final drilled |
With that, it was time to start disassembling the elevators in preparation for deburring and dimpling. I decided to disassemble the left elevator first and dimple that one prior to tacking the right elevator. That way I could use the right elevator for reference if I wasn't sure of something during the dimpling process.
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| Left elevator disassembled and ready for hole deburring |
I spent the rest of the weekend deburring all the holes in the left elevator parts, except for the holes to which the elevator tip fairing would later be installed.
Next I decided to tackle the trim access cover plates. This involves attaching the trim cable anchor brackets to the underside of the cover plates. I decided to upgrade from the Van's supplied anchor brackets (a nut welded to a steel plate) and went with the machined aluminum anchor brackets from iFlyRV10.
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| Anchor brackets comparison. The aluminum brackets look much sturdier and weigh around the same as the steel/nut brackets |
After deburring all edges, I upsized the holes in the anchor brackets to #30, marked the locations of the anchor brackets on the underside of the cover plates, clamped them in position and match drilled the #30 holes into the cover plates, clecoing each hole as I went.
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| Anchor brackets drilled and clecoed to the cover plates |
I then dimpled all the #6 screw holes and all the #40 holes (including the nutplate attachment holes) in the cover plates and the left reinforcement plate. I'll dimple the right reinforcement plate after I disassemble the right elevator.
I was surprised that the dimpled screw holes were so close to the edge of the reinforcement plates, but I made sure all holes were deburred prior to dimpling to ensure that no cracks would occur in the dimples.
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| Cover plates and reinforcement plate dimpled and ready to rivet! |
Build Hints
- Nothing new! Just the usual drilling, deburring and dimpling!
Time Taken: 8.8 hours
Dates: November 3 - November 7 2022
Elevators Total Time: 23.4 hours
RV-10 Build Total Time: 187.1 hours
Priming Total Time: 15.8 hours (not included in build time totals)