Hello everyone, my name is Matt and I just joined the forum today in search of some advice. I am a mechanical engineer from Wilmington, DE and building an RV-8. I've been working on this project for a long time, but am really in full swing now. I hope to be finished by the end of the year.
I wanted to get on here and get some advice on a problem that has really been bothering me. I am dying to move forward, but I really want to get this right. I am in the process of rigging up the elevators. I already had to re-order and build a new left hand elevator because of a mistake I made and couldn't live with on the first one. I am at the step that involves drilling the holes in the control horns. I know the horns are rarely aligned perfectly, I have spoken to Vans and some friends about that. Thats not the problem I have. My problem is that when I clamp the ends of the elevators to the horiz stab as the instructions say, the trailing edges of my elevators are not aligned. Just by eyeballing it, they seem to be off about a 1/2 inch. I know that having the trailing edges aligned is the most important thing here, and I have done a few searches on this forum which leads me to believe that one of my elevators is twisted. My questions for you guys are: Can this be repaired? If it cant be repaired, is having the ends slightly off but having the trailing edge aligned ok? I also want to know if anyone has come up with a good way to align the trailing edges on an RV-8 other than clamping the ends in trail? I have seen that on other models some people clamp an angle across the two, but the tapered elevator on the RV-8 doesn't allow for that. Thanks in advance for the help everyone, hopefully you guys can help me move forward when I get home tonight.
I wanted to get on here and get some advice on a problem that has really been bothering me. I am dying to move forward, but I really want to get this right. I am in the process of rigging up the elevators. I already had to re-order and build a new left hand elevator because of a mistake I made and couldn't live with on the first one. I am at the step that involves drilling the holes in the control horns. I know the horns are rarely aligned perfectly, I have spoken to Vans and some friends about that. Thats not the problem I have. My problem is that when I clamp the ends of the elevators to the horiz stab as the instructions say, the trailing edges of my elevators are not aligned. Just by eyeballing it, they seem to be off about a 1/2 inch. I know that having the trailing edges aligned is the most important thing here, and I have done a few searches on this forum which leads me to believe that one of my elevators is twisted. My questions for you guys are: Can this be repaired? If it cant be repaired, is having the ends slightly off but having the trailing edge aligned ok? I also want to know if anyone has come up with a good way to align the trailing edges on an RV-8 other than clamping the ends in trail? I have seen that on other models some people clamp an angle across the two, but the tapered elevator on the RV-8 doesn't allow for that. Thanks in advance for the help everyone, hopefully you guys can help me move forward when I get home tonight.