Section 8 - Horizontal Stabilizer

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	Section Hours: 112.2	Section Status: Complete

April 21, 2006 (8-2 step 1): After all the chores are done, and work is done, it's back out in the garage for a little bit. Angela's keeping a watchful eye on me, but letting me do my thing. Yet she's gettin' antsy again... so she starts looking ahead in the plans. Horizontal stabilizer here she comes! The first step as usual is to debur parts. This is one of those beefy structural parts. It's the doubler for the rear spar.

April 22, 2006 (8-2 step 1): While I drilled the angle iron for the trailing edge, Angela moved on with the horizontal stabilizer. She got the long rear spar out of the box and started on the deburring. She tried a couple of methods, but finally found a good use for the vixen file! This spar is made of some pretty thick aluminum, and the vixen handled knocking off the edges of it quite well!

April 26, 2006 (8-2 step 3): Angela continued on with the horizontal stabilizer tonight. Here she's final drilling the #12 holes in the HS-912 hinge brackets. There are 8 of these and they are used to attach the elevators to the horizontal stabilizer.

(8-2 step 2): Angela then moved on to the rear spar and finished up deburring all the lightening holes. She got a little frustrated trying to determine an effective method to do this. After that, she clecoed in the HS-906 rear spar doubler and bagan the process of match drilling the holes indicated in the plans.

And finally, she countersunk the 2 center holes in the spar, and final-drilled the 2 holes above and below to #12. These holes will be used to attach the inboard bracket assembly.

April 27, 2006 (8-3 step 3): While I was working on the rudder Angela jumped back on the horizontal stabilizer. Her next step was to fashion the front spar attachment brackets out of some beefy aluminum angle. The plans mention to be pretty accurate on some of the holes on these, but I think we've got the right person on the job ;-)

(8-3 step 4): Here's Angela with something a little better to show for her efforts tonight than I... the nicely shaped front spar attachment brackets. It's getting late so she decided to put off drilling the holes until next time.

April 29, 2006 (8-3 step 3): Angela started the day by carefully measuring and drilling the holes in the horizontal stabilizer attachment brackets.

(8-4 step 1): After the brackets were done, she was off to the next step... trimming the front horizontal stabilizer front spar caps & stringers.

After trimming all 6, then came the deburring. Lots of deburring on an airplane, although we're learning not to do as much as we have been. I think we could still do even less. Just gotta bring ourselves to do it!

(8-5 step 1): Next she started the deburring process on the horizontal stabilizer front spar. Once we get all the spars, doublers, and caps ready, we'll see about priming all of them.

April 30, 2006 (8-5 step 2): Today Angela jumped right back on the horizontal stabilizer front spar. She clamped one of the HS-1013 front spar caps to the front spar making sure it "covers the thirty-third hole in the end of the spar flange"... basically it was centered on the front spar. After checking for symmetry she match drilled the flange holes 1/8"... unfortunately she would later realize this was incorrect :-( Turns out she had read, re-read... and then re-re-read the plans before putting drill to metal. She then told me she found out the hard way that this doesn't work so well days before the operation (doh!) Mental note... not only will we re-re-read the plans prior to any 'metal removal'... we will make sure to do it just prior to metal removal! The end result is we have one spar cap & the front spar with 1/8" holes in the flange along the entire length of the spar cap. These are holes that will eventually attach skin, so I think we can get away with it (albeit with bigger rivets!) but we'll shoot an email to Van's tech support first just to make sure.

May 3, 2006: Angela heard back from Van's on her front spar incident... no harm, no foul... we'll just have bigger rivets to buck in the skin! Kinda what we figured, but now we know we don't have to pay for a new front spar and cap (and most importantly shipping! That thing is 11 feet long!!)

(8-5 step 2): Its amazing what uncertainty can do to you! Once Angela was reassured that we were good to go on the horizontal stabilizer front spar she srung back to life with enthusiasm! Here she's final drilling the web holes into the cap (what she originally intended to do Sunday) Once drilled, they came apart and everything needed to be deburred. She then repeated the process for the spar cap that rests in the opposite flange... a lot of seamingly fragile pieces that will all be combined together to form a pretty stout structural member!

May 4, 2006 (8-5 step 4): Tonight Angela was right back out in the garage and back to work. Here she's match drilling all the holes in the in the front spar to the attachcment brackets. These will be used to attach the front part of the horizontal stabilizer to the rest of the airplane.

Here's a pic of the brackets after the spar has been turned over…

(8-5 step 5): Once the brackets were done, then came all the holes common to the doubler and the spar. After that, then she got to final drill the 4 "big" holes. I haven't measured it, but the aluminum stackup through this area is pretty thick!

(8-5 step 7): The final thing Angela did for the night was final drill & then countersink the middle 9 holes in the spar flanges. This is where everything comes together at the tail of the aircraft.

May 5, 2006 (8-5 step 8): While I was having a blast ;-) with the rudder, Angela was out taking advantage of the beautiful weather. Here she's deburring the horizontal stabilizer front spar caps.

(8-6 step 4): Still waiting on me to finish the rudder ;-) Angela moved on to other things on the horizontal stabilizer. Here she's deburring one of the HS-1004 inspar ribs that she cut part of the flange off.

Angela took this shot to show some of the tools she used on the inspar rib. One of the tools we received from her friend has three sides, all razor sharp. She says this is her new favorite debur tool for lightening holes.

(8-7 step 1): Here Angela is putting those tools to work! You know, by the time we get the vertical stabilizer & rudder finished, we'll be a good portion through our horizontal stabilizer also... kewl!