Constructing the elevator is the usual assemble, deburr, rivet procedure with the extra twists of building an electric trim on the elevator and installing a servo mechanism. Onward then…..
First task of the day was to identify all the parts and mark their top sides and locations. In most cases this is easy: the spar can go either way so just pick one, and the middle and tip ribs have pre-drilled holes on the top side. The top for the nose ribs however are determined by drawing a line between the tooling holes and the top is determined by which side the line points towards.
After that cleco the ribs to the spar and drill out the holes to size 30.
One of the nose ribs takes a grommet to allow the servo cable to pass through it without chafing. To make the hole I used a step bit, a tool I had never used before.
The elevator skin comes in two halves and we slot the spar assembly into the first skin and clecoed in place, followed by the second skin.
After that the whole thing gets turned over and the bottom side of the skin is clecoed to the spar.
The final act of this session was to attach the tip ribs to each end, clecoing them on the top of the spar.
I like how quickly the shape of this part came together, makes you feel good. But from there there are a lot of pieces that get attached here and there so things aren’t likely to look much different for a while.