I finished up all the riveting on the left elevator today. It all went quite well and was pretty quick. I also drilled the holes, deburred and blind riveted the tabs that I messed up a bit the other day. Then came the task of attaching the trim tab. I had gotten a little ahead of the instruction and finished up the trim tab a while ago. I skipped around a bit and already attached the hinge to the trim tab and had already drilled and riveted the ends of it too. I'd say it's a testament to my skill that it all came out nearly perfectly and I had no problems getting it to line up really well, but that'd be a lie. It was mostly luck, I think. The only thing that I might have done differently is wait to drill and attach the hinge, as it wasn't perfectly centered between the tab and elevator when I got the trailing edge lined up nicely. No problem, though, mostly an annoyance that it isn't perfectly symmetrical. I'm sure nobody but me will ever notice anyways, as it looks and works just fine. Here's a pic of the edges getting lined up and fit so I can drill the hinge to the elevator.
And it came out great. I drilled and deburred the holes, ground off the end of the hinge sticking out beyond the inboard edge and riveted it all together. The riveting put some slight bends in the hinge, but that was easliy fixed with a pair of pliers. I bent the bottom edge of the trim tab for clearance with my fingers and stuck it back on there. Looks great! Except the hinge pin seems kinda short to me. Only about a little over an inch hanging out, not really enough to bend over and attach to the spar. Maybe Van's will hear about that. It's not like I cut any off the pin or anything, I think they jsut gave me a hinge that was a little too short (The hinge itself was fine, as it gets cut anyways, just the pin is a little on the short side). Oh and one other miniscule mod to the plans I got to make here. They call for 4 blind rivets in the trim tab spar on the elevator where you can't reach. Turns out that the first one is reachable with the squeezer, so I only had to use 3 per side. :) I still think those 3 are an eyesore, though. Blind rivets are mucho ugly compared to solid ones in my opinion. Just leading edge bending, the two end rivets in the outboard rib, and eye bolts and this one will be done. And the metalwork will be complete for the empennage kit!
