Gang, been way to long since I posted anything so thought I better get on the stick and get everyone caught up on this build
So let me pick up with the tail section.
First here’s a picture of the rudder and elevator servos. (Excuse the rough cutting on the horizontal stabilizer for the elevator control rods. We were in a hurry and used an X-acto knife and it turned out pretty rough. I may go back in later and touch it up but given that this is covered up I may chose not to do it)
In the above picture you can also see the elevator linkage. This is pretty straight forward and similar to a convention elevator hook up.
Here’s how the rudder servo adapter was made:
Taking 3/16 by 3/8 brass rectangle I cut one edge the length of the servo arm and tapered the other end to a 3/16 point.
The edge that sat on top of the servo had to be notched in the middle as the servo screw sat a little above the servo arm. Then taking 3/16 square brass stock I silver soldered this to the center of the brass arm brace.
The angle of the rudder servo is critical as it has to match the angle of the rudder on the vertical stabilizer. I'll show a picture later that can better show this.
The rudder servo was mounted (epoxied) in the horizontal stabilizer with a plywood mount.
Here's a picture of the pieces that make up the mount.
Here's a picture with the pieces epoxied and the servo screwed in the mount.
A notch was made in the horizontal stabilizer and the servo & mount were then epoxied into the horizontal stabilizer. This looks rough as the first mounting angle was off and I had to break it out, remake the plywood frame and remount it. You know the old saying measure 3 times, cut once. Well in this case I measured once and ended up having to cut twice! The angle of this servo mount is very critical.
Here’s a picture that explains why the angle is critical. If the angle is not spot on then there will be binding when the servo tries to move the rudder.
If the servo angle is off even just a little then you'll get some binding when moving the servo one way or the other.
The mounting of the rudder should have been pretty straight forward but again we made a small mistake that cost us several days of work and a slightly damaged vertical stabilizer. What had happened was when we had epoxied several blind nut plywood mounts in the bottom of the vertical stabilizer we had first drilled holes for the blind nuts, hammered these into the two plywood pieces and then epoxied these into the vertical stabilizer. This is what it looked like with the plywood mounts glued in,
The next day I went to mount this on the fuselage and I just couldn't find any bolts to fit the blind nuts we had used. A trip to the hardware store was called for and after an hour of looking just couldn't find anything that fit. That's when I realized that when we hammered the blindnuts into the plywood we had accidently smashed one end. It wasn't much and you couldn't tell by just glancing at it but when I looked closely you could see the end was smashed a little. So I picked up some new blind nuts and bolts and headed back home.
This was where the nightmare began!
I first tried to push the blind nuts out but because we had epoxied them in they just wouldn't press out. So next step was to remove the plywood mounts. These also were epoxied into the rudder so I had to take a soldering iron and slowly and carefully heat the wood up in order to soften the epoxy. This effort took hours and even though I was careful when I had to twist these to break them out I also ended up cracking the leading edge of the vertical stabilizer. UUUGGGHHHH!!!!
After a few minutes of teeth mashing I was back to trying to figure out how I was going to fix this mistake. Here's what the crack looked like:
I contacted Cliff and got some touch up paint. I'm really glad he had this.
I fixed the crack with some light fiberglass cloth and some thinned epoxy so other than some painting it's solid again.
Anyway the first step was to make some new mounts. Since I needed something that was light and strong I made another blindnut mount.
Here the blindbuts have "carefully" pressed in and epoxied.
This was then epoxied into the vertical stabilizer.
The long piece sticking out of the vertical stabilizer slides into a hole cut out on the top of the fuselage and is what is used to give some strong support to the vertical stabilizer.
Here's a picture showing how the rudder support sits in the fuselage. If you look at the top inside edge of the fuselage you can see where I glued a small plywood mount and the two bolts that hold the vertical stabilizer to the fuselage.
For the support I had to make a small bulkhead that this piece would slide into. So I took some measurements and made a mounting bulkhead for this piece.
Here's a picture of the back of the bulkhead showing the two rails that the rudder support sits between.
Here's a picture of the bulkhead mounted in the fuselage with the rudder mounted.
Here's the tail section assembled