Sunday, Jan 19, 2003  2.5 hours

This doesn't really fit on the fuse page but who cares...

I made the push rods for the elevators.  Cut the pipe to length, mark the holes and pop rivet the ends in place.

I also drilled the elevator horns where the push rod attaches.  The directions are really clear here.   (I started writing the details but they are in the plans.....)   The ideal is to make sure that the holes in both horns are square with each other.

Here are the two horns clamped together.  I've already drilled one horn, drilled a hole in the block with the drill press and now I'm ready to drill through the block into the other elevator horn.

Saturday, Jan 25, 2003 8 hours.

I decided that I'd go ahead and attach the tail feathers to the fuselage.  I've skipped attaching the wings.  It has been really cold the last week or two with the lows being below zero some nights.  I think that I can turn the fuselage diagonally across the garage and get both wings on the plane in the garage.  I'll need to boot Linda's car out of the garage when I do this so I think it's best to delay the wings for a few weeks.

Horizontal stabilizer clamped in place.

After you get the forward spar clamped in place you put a 3/16 bit under the aft to set the incidence of the HS.

After checking measurements many, many times, I drilled the HS.  I went to the hardware store and picked up some #10 screws instead of using my good nuts and bolts as almost all this will come back off. 

  I wanted to get the elevators set as well so I need to get the control sticks installed.  I had put this stuff together loosely when I was messing with the bulkheads many moons ago. So today was really making sure everything was aligned, then torque the bolts.

After getting all the pushrods installed I started on the VS. 

This is where the spar of the VS attaches.  Just measure a couple hundred times to make sure the VS is truly vertical, clamp and drill.

Here's the rear VS spar where it attaches to the elevator top travel stop.

And here's the bottom of the VS.  It was kind of interesting as I had to back drill from the inside as the tie down bracket was already installed and had pilot holes already drilled.  One of the tools that I wish I had bought at the beginning is a right angle air drill.  I've got an right angle attachment but it is always to big.  I did make it work by shortening the drill bit (broke it). 

This is exciting to see the tail feathers bolted in place.

Sunday, Jan 26, 2003  1 hour

I clecoed together the forward cabin area where the instrument panel attaches.  I need to see if there was going to be an issue with my long legs hitting the bottom of the panel and I'm glad to report that there is no problem.

I downloaded a Visio layout of Bill Vondane's electrical layout and modified it to suit my desire.  I then printed it out to full size just to get a rough idea of how things would appear.

Just a shot of the forward portion of the cabin area clecoed together.