Another really fun night in the shop.

With the elevators, vertical, and rudder tips done (oops, not the rudder bottom), I decided to get the horizontal stabilizer off the wall and start on it’s 2 tips.

First up, you need to lay out and drill the horizontal for holes. Because this HS is used for both the -8 and -7, they have you trim the edge of the HS to allow for the elevators. Therefore, they can’t pre-drill the holes and they leave it up to you to do.

I marked some edge distances, and used just shy of 1.5″ for spacing.

After drilling to #40…

I then clamped the tip in place and drilled and clecoed to #40. (Apparently I also used a big square to mark a trim line on the tip.)

After some trimming and drilling of the other side…

I guess we’re back to the first side? Nope, this is the other tip.

Because I don’t have the nutplates and #6 screws to finish that job, I moved on to mounting the elevators again to work on travel.

A quick check on the manual tells me that I need somewhere between 20 and 25 degrees of down elevator.

Okay. Brace yourself for some math.

When the elevators were in trail (0deg travel), there was 7/16ths of space between the horn and the lower flange of the HS rear spar. My iphone measured this as -7deg.

When I let the horn touch the flange, my iphone read 10deg, which translates to 17deg of travel.

Because I am aiming for 25 degrees, I need (calculator sounds) to cut the flange back by 3.3/16ths.

Fat sharpie marks on the flange let me drill some radii before making the cut.

Then (holding breath), I used the dremel with a cutoff wheel to very carefully trim along my lines.

After a little cleanup with a file…

Let’s see how it looks in the elevator-down position.

Now for some more math. After repositioning the HS and elevators, I measured from in trail on both elevators (iphone measured -8deg), I let the horns rest against the new flange cutout, and the iphone read 16 deg on both elevators.

THAT’S 24 DEGREES OF TRAVEL!!!! Perfect!

I had to stand back and admire my work.

But it felt a little precarious on the bench, so I went ahead and got it up on the wall for safekeeping.

I’m kind of running out of stuff to do until the wing kit arrives.

I can finish the tip attachment when the new screws and nutplates come.

2.0 hours on the horizontal stabilizer. No rivets today.