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Elevator Stiffeners Backwards

Kolg

Active Member
Well, I was on a roll and made a dumb mistake. On the top skin of the left elevator I installed four of the short stiffeners backwards. This won’t cause any interferences and I don’t think it’s a problem, but would love to hear other builder opinions.

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Are we talking about the stiffeners made out of stamped angle that is notched to show where to cut?

I can't remember if in my case it was rudder or elevators, but I had the same thing happen. Don't know if I got two "lefts" & no "rights" or something, but no matter how many times I twisted and turned things, the reality was if you cut to those pre-punched notches, you ended up with a couple of sets of stiffeners that had the flanges opposite how they were depicted on the print.

I called Vans and they said in this case it didn't matter which way the flanges faced as long as they were a matched set top/bottom so the flanges didn't interfere with each other rat the trailing edge.
 
As long as you make the same mistake on the bottom of the elevator, so when the elevator is closed up the 2 sets of stiffeners don’t interfere with each other then there’s not issue as far as I can see.

Build on!
 
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