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Upon purchase of my BL, it was obvious that the empenage needed some rigging tweaks. The stab was not level with the wings, nor was the fin vertical. Oh, and the tie rod hardware was backwards on one side (stab bracket on fin, and fin bracket on stab). Also, the elevator cables were slack.
So I pulled the wires, elevators and leveled the airplane. Cleaning up the threads on the tie rods and getting the tail square was straightforward, but inspection of my left elevator upper horn revealed a significantly egged out hole. No problem, I'll simply weld, dress, paint and redrill. So I hung the right side and all three hinge pins slid in pretty easily and the surface moved through the full range without binding. The left side however was obviously bent. The middle pin was a half hole out fore/aft. Efforts to straighten it were largely unsuccessful, but I was able to get the pin in with a little body english. The surface does move freely, but is obviously tweaking the stab a little as it goes full travel. Good thing welded tube surfaces are a little flexible...
Anyway, I clamped a straight board across both surfaces to fair them with the fixed stab and installed a bolt and washers (as spacers) in the lower horn and snugged them up in prep for drilling the one upper hole. I also added the appropriate spacer to the upper horn and clamped them together, planning to use the one good horn as a drill guide for the repaired side. With the drill square, creating a new, matched hole was no problem. HOWEVER... The new hole is clearly not in the center of the repaired horn, and is easily aft at least 3/16. Not a big deal from a funtional standpoint, as there is more than enough ED on the tension side, but it still bugs me.
I believe my only course of action at this point is to strip the elevator, bend the spar back into alignment, and then repair and move the horn once again. Anyone else run into this, and if so, can you recommend a different corrective action?
So I pulled the wires, elevators and leveled the airplane. Cleaning up the threads on the tie rods and getting the tail square was straightforward, but inspection of my left elevator upper horn revealed a significantly egged out hole. No problem, I'll simply weld, dress, paint and redrill. So I hung the right side and all three hinge pins slid in pretty easily and the surface moved through the full range without binding. The left side however was obviously bent. The middle pin was a half hole out fore/aft. Efforts to straighten it were largely unsuccessful, but I was able to get the pin in with a little body english. The surface does move freely, but is obviously tweaking the stab a little as it goes full travel. Good thing welded tube surfaces are a little flexible...
Anyway, I clamped a straight board across both surfaces to fair them with the fixed stab and installed a bolt and washers (as spacers) in the lower horn and snugged them up in prep for drilling the one upper hole. I also added the appropriate spacer to the upper horn and clamped them together, planning to use the one good horn as a drill guide for the repaired side. With the drill square, creating a new, matched hole was no problem. HOWEVER... The new hole is clearly not in the center of the repaired horn, and is easily aft at least 3/16. Not a big deal from a funtional standpoint, as there is more than enough ED on the tension side, but it still bugs me.
I believe my only course of action at this point is to strip the elevator, bend the spar back into alignment, and then repair and move the horn once again. Anyone else run into this, and if so, can you recommend a different corrective action?
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