Fit to Fuselage

Step 3 FITTING ELEVATORS & TORQUE TUBE TO FUSELAGE

Given where my F-28 is located, I had to cut a small notch in the fuselage side to get the canard installed in the right place. I also tried to get tricky (more on this later) with the bottom seat for the canard, leaving a bump where the gap is between the canard and elevator.

Same procedure other side. I definitely over-engineered the bottom seat place, as you all probably know the canard has to come straight forward to come off. Think it will do that with this bump located here? I don't think so...

I took some coarse measurement and marked the elevators accordingly to remove enough material for clearance.

Here's a close up of the bump I left forward of the canard. This shot also shows that I need to trim the side of the fuselage immediately aft of the elevator pivot point. If you look closely, you can see that is is rubbing; it has roughed up the side of the fuselage.

Here's the elevator after trimming w/the measurements I took. I was not happy with how this turned out. Sure, I needed to make a fairing of sorts on the side of the plane, but, the gap is much too wide, and, is not constant because of the curve on the side of the fuselage.

Here's the front of F-28 after adding the single ply of BID...

..and the other side after doing the same. The gray pieces on top of F-22 are some lead weights that I used as the 1/16" spacers. They're made for balancing ceiling fans, but, just happened to have a sticky side on them and be almost exactly 1/16" thick. Perfect!

You can see that bump I left on the bottom seat of the canard as well...

I microed the end of the elevators back on after I realized I had cut off too much.

Same thing on the other side. I'm not worried about strength here, there's only gonna' be about 1/8" left after this gets trimmed to size.

The infamous bump. Canard is not coming off; once the alignment pins are installed. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

You can see the side of the fuselage aft of the elevator pivot point has been shaved down for clearance.

Same issue on the other side. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Installing the alignment pins permanently with flox didn't go so well. Sure, I was careful with the flox, but, the bushing ended up glued to the face of F-28 and pulled itself out of the alignment pins.

Same problem other side. I will have to re-think how to do this step so this doesn't happen again.

The alignment pin was pretty much destroyed after I got the canard off. I decided to rebuild these, leaving the glass layups in place and re-installing the foam and bushings. See below.

I ended up cutting the bump off with a hacksaw (with the canard installed still) to get the canard off. Here I am shaving the bottom seat level after all that was done.

Worse than above, I had to pull the alignment pins out of F-28 to get the bushings off of the pins. I will have to re-think how to do this step so this doesn't happen again.

Given that the foam had split when I pulled the canard off of the plane, I had to rebuild the alignment tabs. I started by using a hack saw blade to remove all of the damaged foam and the micro from the inside of the fore and aft layups.

Then, I microed a new piece of foam between the two layups. This got clamped together (sorry, no pictures of that). I am confident this is as good or better than the original tab, strength-wise.

Take two, floxing the alignment pins into their holes. I was very careful with the flox this time - do you see any weeping out after installing the pins? I don't. Why?

...because I used about 20 Q-tips and cleaned up every little speck of flox I could see. I didn't want to redo these a third time....

Further, I used wax paper wrapped around the alignment pins and bushings to even further reduce the chance of the flox sticking things together that were not supposed to. I even left the hole in the pins covered so the pin, when inserted into the tab, would have a bit of wax paper sealing all the way around it.

Come on, waxed paper, work your magic! I don't want to redo these tabs again!

Once that layup cured (it didn't stick together, by the way) it was time to store the canard. My daughter Emily came down to help me. She too this shot of me on the step stool getting ready to hang the canard.

We used some webbing to make a hanger for the canard and elevator assembly.

Here's a shot of my helper, Emily. Nice smile!

All done! Straps are secure, canard stored on its nose to avoid any warpage, up and out of the way to prevent any damage!

That completes Chapter 12. Click here for Chapter 13.