Horizontal Stabilizer - Day 2

Spent some time up at KIIB today to attend a free ground school they held on weather. We had a great time hanging out with everyone up there as always, grabbed some lunch and didn't make it back until well into the evening so today was another relatively short day of work... but made some pretty cool parts! Since I am skipping the riveting steps for now to save them for later, I moved on to Section 8-3, assembling the inboard elevator hinge and fabricating the front spar attachment brackets out of raw angle aluminum. These brackets took several hours to make, and I have to say I'm pretty proud of the result!

The spec for the HS-1008 brackets

HS-811 Inboard Hinge, and HS-1008-R/L Brackets

Fabricating the two attachment brackets paved new ground for me, for sure. As I started on this step, I wasn't quite certain what part I was actually making, or what it would eventually be used for. However, it seemed that the thickness of the angle aluminum (AA6-187 x 2" x 2.5") combined with the exacting tolerances (to the 1/32nd of an inch!) specified in the plans meant that this must be a pretty important part. The realization slowly started to sink in, oh yeah, these are the two brackets that will attach the HS to the rest of the plane... don't mess these up! With some slow and careful measurements/cutting, combined with a lot more patience than I usually exhibit with small 2 square inch parts, I think they ended up coming out pretty darn close to spec. :-) Oh yeah, also, it turns out aluminum makes a great heatsink! Cutting these with the bandsaw resulted in some pretty toasty parts at times-- the word "yeeeeow!" may have been heard once or twice in the garage tonight...