2004-12-18
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I installed the left elevator on to the horizontal stabilizer today and wanted to get it balanced. Unlike the right elevator, this one is heavy on the trailing edge. That means that there is no drilling out of lead to get this one balanced. Another strategy is required.

I took a stack of washers and bolted them on to the tooling hole in the counterbalance arm. This turned out to be the right amount of weight to balance it.

One thing that I noticed was that one of the elevator control horns sits about 1/16 above the other one. Has anyone every seen this? I'm going to assume that it makes no difference.

I fashioned a drill bushing out of some pipe I had and drilled out the control horns. Then I enlarged the holes to 1/4" using the step drill. I stuck the bolt and all of the washers through the main bearing and got ready to tighten the nut. It was almost impossible to get any wrench in there. Fortunately I had this one which did the trick.

It was a little difficult but I got it done.

Kathryn put the bolts in the rest of the hinge points.

She was pretty good with those wrenches.