| Date: 09-11-2015 | |
| Number of Hours: 15 | |
| Manual Reference: HP Rudder 1 |
Having made the cutouts I thought the rudders would separate from the winglets easily. Wrong!!
After 4 hours of twisting and turning on the left one I called it a night. The next day a careful hour on the right had it popping out easily. The left I felt must have some epoxy caught on the end. What it really needed was just a block of wood, a little courage and a couple of sharp taps with a big hammer. I still don’t understand why the problem but they were finally out and intact as you see in pic 1. I have a bit of fixing up for the left one in the winglet but all doable. I hope I’ve left enough of a space for the bellhorn. Time will reveal all.
Meanwhile I’ve drilled out the rivets on the ends of the bellhorns and the 4130N metal is off. I’m going to add a spacer here as while sanding the aluminium part of the bellhorn I lost just a bit of meat and the eyelet would have been too tight. A relatively easy fix later when I’m waiting for epoxy to cure.
Next up was a lot of sanding over two days to get about an inch down each side down to bare glass. 0.6″ at the top too. Pic 2 shows the results and a simple holder made out of foam scraps. My cheap corded dremel knock off died so I went and spent the big bucks on a proper new one. It has a quick release chuck. WOW I love it. I should have gotten one of these a couple of thousand hours of build time ago. Model 4200 if you’re interested.
The bottom area I’d already made a little bulk head when the bellhorn went in. I cleaned up the space behind that and I’ve added two ply of BID to both areas as a little more reinforcement and in line with the plans putting two ply here. This will also make the bellhorn more secure given it drives the whole rudder from this area. You can see where I mean in pic 2 before the layup.
Pic 3 shows my little layup with a few tongue depressors and pegs to keep the glass in place. A nice small job after I spent much of the day cutting glass and prepping for the larger areas on the rudders. I’ve decided to line up the hinges later.
Finally out
Prepping for layups
Bottom end glassing