Horizontal Stab 1...
After dealing with the problems on the rudder tailing edge, I was definitely looking forward to starting the horizontal stab. It's the first piece where you begin to get an idea of the size of the plane. You begin working on the spars first. Very easy and straightforward. Both have large doublers, but the fwd spar has a much larger doubler, and caps on the top and bottom flanges.
Rear spar getting set up. Hinges held in position, and ready to be match drilled.
This is a shot of the upper spar cap being placed before drilling.... which I screwed up. The layout is easy, and well spelled out in the manual. The spar cap piece itself is somewhat bowed when it arrives. Obviously, its not a piece you can "flute" to straighten, so, for the most part you have to just clamp it into position, and start the match drilling. I used what I thought was a lot of clamps, but I still screwed it up.
As near as I can figure, I think one of my spring cleco clamps prevented the C-clamps from being able to drive the spar cap flush with the web of the spar.
It is not the best pic, but you can just barely see a small gap between the spar web, and the back of the spar cap in this pic. It was enough to make all of the holes incorrect. No worries though, because ordering a new spar cap is cheap, a new spar? not so much.
A few days later, the new spar cap arrived, and we were back to the build. (son in pic :-)
This time I double and triple checked the alignment of the part. I clamped it better, and it went in quick.
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