314 hours on the hobbs, Finish the Rudder and Let the elevators rise!!!!!

....Some final thoughts on the rudder. Just a couple more pics to show the details of the temporary hinge pin that I had to forcefully remove in order to separate the VS and rudder as described in my previous post. See the etched marks where the 1/2 inch cold chisel was placed to try to hammer out the pin from the hinge. Nice thing to have to do to something attached your aluminum airplane, huh!

The marks on the curved part are where the cold chisel was place. The marks on the top part were made by the hinge as I tried to pound this little sucker out.

Next is the tip of the temporary hinge that I had to cut off with the dremel tool. Not a real good pic, but if you look closely, you can see the ridge that had built up on the end, right next to the hinge plate, which is why I could not remove it easily. Thanks a gain Van's for not elaborating on the need to drill out the hinges to final size. (Still pissed off about that!)

And lastly, a set of new temporary hinges from Aircraft Spruce (Actually made by Avery tools). I ordered these fr several reasons: They have the threaded end on one end along with a threaded holder for ease of placement/removal, and they are short enough to allow for full control surface travel one placed in the hinge. They don't have that stupid long extension that gets in the way. The threaded holder allows me to get leverage on the hinge via the screw threads instead of having to pound it out with a hammer. Of course, now that I know I need to finish drill all the hinge holes to the correct size, I don't expect to ever have a problem with this again.

Now on to brighter things - -no more rudder for a while -  on to the elevators, which make the plane go up and down......

The process is very much like building the rudder. Starts with stiffeners as the main support element for the elevator skins. Here is my little work table setup that I clamped to the work bench. I decided to trim the stiffeners outside this time to keep from messing up my inside workroom work benches. Thankfully the elevators are a bit smallers in all dimensions from the rudder, so all the structural pieces are a bit smaller as well. I clamped a small piece of partical board to the the end of the workbench to allow several edges to place the angle for the stiffeners depending the cut I needed to make, and used my dremel tool with a extension shaft that I got for christmas to provide a bit more control while trimming the stiffeners.

I use two different types of REINFORCED cutoff wheels. If you use a dremel tool, and I can't for the life of understand how you will be able to finish a kit like this without one, do NOT use the small flimsy non-reinforced wheels that typically will come with a standard dremel tool kit. Use the larger, reinforced ones, adn remember to where ear adn eye protection when you trim the stiffeners from the angle. Why use  dremel instead of the shears as Van;s suggests? Because the shears leave serrated edge on the metal and are not well suited fortrimming smaller parts. The edge has to be filed down to remove any stress risers, whereas the dremel cut is much easier to cleanup with the Scotch Brite wheel.

And a shot of pretty much all the equipment to get the job done. Be sure to buy the economy pack up cutoff wheels - you will run through many of them:

A shot of the rough cut stiffeners after using the dremel tool to trim them to initial shape. Edges are very sharp and jagged at this point, so be very careful handling these pieces..

Note that I always leave some excess from the cutline on purpose so that I can bring then down to final shape using the scotch brite wheel, which is much easier to control. I also take the time to get the tail end each stiffener small enough so that when the elevator is bent the edges of the stiffeners will not interfere with the skin.

Thes next three pics are of yet another screw up that may actually cost me a new right elevator skin. I had cleanup the stiffeners and dimpled them, and was then in the process of dimpling the right elevator skin. I thought I had developed a sure fire method to prevent pounding a dimple hole in an unwanted place on the skin, but I managed to find a way around it.... THe pics that follow are what is know to us builders as the dreaded figure 8 dimple, because that is what it looks like when you screw it up. The new hole is close to the actual hole and this creates the figure 8 effect. IN my case, I tried to smooth out the bad one with my flush set, which worked pretty well, but then I tried to dimple the original hole and ended up with a crack that I now have to resolve somehow. I have posted the pics to VAF to get some opinions as to the best method to try to finx this. Hopefully I won't need a new skin. The first two are on the underside of the skin, and the last pic is looking at it from the outside. Can't let this crack go unattended or it will surely continue to crack later on...

As a well known participant on Van's Air Force forums always says, "It's just one damn thing after another...."

Oh, and to finish up - went on the annual dove hunt with my youngest son and my neighbor, a fellow CFII and coworker. We caught a couple of pics of some awesome sunrises out there that I thought I would share. This is out in Northeastern Colorado in farm and cow country. I can't wait to see some more of these types of scenic views from the air. Hope you enjoy them.