| May 15, 2007 |
| Vertical Stabilizer |
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| OK... This page is NOT for the squeamish. Pictures on this page might make you sick. It was a very difficult time for me, Thanks for your understanding! |
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| Finished the rudder earlier tonight so my "motivation ball" had momentum! Dad and I proceeded with tackling the first part of the vertical stab. |
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| OK here we go... Part: Vertical Tail Main Assembly. Problem: Mating T12-03 (Upper Spar Channel) with T12-04 ( Lower Spar Channel). At first glance it looks as if these two pieces over-lap each other. Come to find out they do NOT. What they do is BUTT up against each other. This particular night dad and I developed "tunnel vision." We just KNEW these pieces went together like the above picture. We had NO measurements of any kind to go off of. There was red flags all over the place! Nothing made sense on the plans, but we just did everything possible to make this work! We spent hours going over the plans measuring everything.. thinking we were missing something. But this did not stop us from doing the unthinkable, we drilled holes! |
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| Here is the other side. After drilling the holes I saw that T12-02 forward strap was kind of in a bind. I knew this was not right! Then it just hit me... "I bet they butt up against each other," Then my dad saw the detail on Section A-A "Upper & Lower Channel BUTT." Darn! To add fuel to the fire, I accidentally drilled 3- AN3 bolts to one size bigger than the 3/16 hole required. I will just move up to the AN4 bolts on these 3, no big deal. The sad part about this whole thing is I downloaded different tips and ideas from a lot of other internet sites.. Also, I have a ton of pictures with me that I can use as reference when a question comes into play. For some reason I negelected to look at any pictures for reference... instead I had to order another SNX Z03-03 aluminum Channel from Sonex. |