5 Feb 05 - Chip Chaser, Horizontal Stab Stuff

The day started out with re-familiarizing myself with how to fly airplanes - tough to keep that skill up with this many parts in the garage, but I guess it's got to be done. We were greeted with a georgeous Saturday, so we got to open the door to the shop (garage), so all the neighbors could see that we're nuts.

Down to business - made this out 0.016 aluminum - seemed pretty flimsy, but it works well - after a extensive playing with it to see how it would work, I was able to get all the chips out from between all the layers of metal.	We had forgotten to drill the hole for the manual trim when we were at Alexander, so here that is.
Match drilled holes between the horizontal stab rear spar and F-711C. More about this in a sec.	Now they've been drilled out all the way and the bolts are in there. Measuring this reveals that it's pretty darn straight, so that's good.

A few observations that may or may not be that interesting:

• Van's way of measuring the distance between the horizontal stab rear spar and the deck of the rear fuse is nice - use a 3/16 drill as a spacer. Seems to work fine.
• It's possible to adjust the alignment of the horizontal stab after you've got the front bolt holes drilled. Obviously, you don't want to do this much at allas it could stress the parts, but it can be done just a little bit if you're not perfectly straight after you drill the front holes.
• The right mounting tab had not been cut off quite as much as the left one on this particular QB kit - it took a bit of filing to get it so it didn't hit the skin on the right side of the horizontal stab. This confused both of us before we figured out that the mounting tabs (F-711C) weren't exactly the same - it was weird to see one skin closer to the tab on one side but the measurements coming out perfectly, or (conversely) it looking right but the measurements being wrong.
• It looks like all the measuring and re-measuring and re-measuring paid off. This is really close. I don't regret not rushing this . . . it seems pretty important.

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