It feels like it's been forever since I've spent much time working on the plane. I got back to working on the vertical stab today. After measuring over and over, I felt like I had it located correctly, so it was time to drill. I clamped it in place and drilled the first few holes for bolts in the rear spar.
The bracket that the front spar rivets to (the bracket gets bolted to the front horizontal spar - it's the blue piece in the picture above) can cause some warping of the rear spear, just depending on exact measurements things were built to. If the front vertical spar sets on the front side of the bracket, it can warp the rear spar in one direction, and if it sets on the back side of the bracket, it can warp it in the other direction. The instructions say it's supposed to go on the front side of the bracket, but provide a lot of options for shims and other solutions to get the rear spar straight. To test the rear spar, I put a straight edge across all 3 of the rudder hinge brackets. They should all line up if the spar is straight. With the front spar on the front side of the attach bracket, the middle hinge is about 1/16" forward of the top and bottom ones. I swapped the front spar to the back of the attach bracket, but that reversed the warp significantly. So I need the spar attached to the front side. I may end up making a thing shim to go in between the pieces and push the front spar forward just a tiny, tiny amount and see if that makes the hinges line up perfectly. Before I do that, I'm going to put the rudder on and see if it even matters. The hinges need to line up so the rudder can swing freely. Each hinge attaches to the rudder with a bearing, just like the elevators do. That means I can move the bearings in/out to line up with the hinge holes. The question is will moving the middle bearing 1/16" forward cause the rudder to bind. I'll just have to play with it and see.
I went ahead and drilled all of the holes for the front spar and attach bracket rivets. I won't rivet this together until I take the vertical stab off again.
I can't remember if I showed this before or not, but I had made the elevator control horn stop last time. I match drilled it to the vertical stab rear spar, aft deck and longerons and temporarily bolted it in place.
The bottom of the rear spar is attached to the aft most bulkhead with 4 bolts. I drilled those holes and put a couple of bolts in to hold it all together while I work on the rudder fit. I don't know why the plans don't call it out earlier, but the bottom hinge gets two additional rivets as well. Why it didn't show those during the initial VS build is beyond me. I can't put them in until I take the VS back off.
I was going to mount the rudder to the VS, but it looks like I am missing one of the bearings. I have 3, but they are all the same size. I need two short ones, plus one long one for the bottom hinge (due to the geometry, each bearing sets at a different distance). I must not have caught the difference when doing my inventory years ago. I saw the right number of bearings and figured they were the right sizes. So yet another order placed to Van's! Expensive little buggers - $25 for a single bearing.
I fabricated the left rudder stop and drilled it in place.
