February 19, 2009

I've pretty much done all that I can before gluing on some skin to the trailing edge of the elevator. Now I'm just waiting for good enough weather conditions. These days in LA, when it's warm enough, it's really dry out. Normal humidity around here is around 50%, and now it's in the teens when it's warm. I don't want to glue these skins on there now because they'll sag when humidity is back to normal. Maybe I'm just over-thinking all of this but, whatever. I can just move on to the stabilizer assembly.

Today, I made the cutout to access the trim tab cable clamp inside the elevator. I wanted to try to make this as small as passible so I went out and gat a tiny quarter-inch wrench to make sure I could still get the nut and wrench in there and turning. I ended up with a hole that's about 15 mm x 17 mm. Not bad at all and I think I'll be able to get away with just using a piece of plastic tape to cover over the opening later on. My method to get the nut on there is to use the box end of the wrench to place the nut on the bolt and then carefully switch to the open side of the wrench to twist it on. There's enough clearance to get a turn between switching the wrench back to turn again.

I also made sure I had everything ready to go when the day comes to glue on these skins. I drew and cut out all the stapling strips. I used 1.5 mm plywood.

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