essyou35

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I had a big scare today but I think I am ok, I THINK. Let me know!

I have NO idea how the guy who bought this jet in 1998 didnt have the plans, it would not be possible to build it without the plans unless you've done it before.
Case and point, the elevators come mostly cut out for you, the are cut out horizontally for you across the stab, all you have to do is make a roughly 2" cut to remove the elevator from the stab.

There are two pieces of bass wood, one is 1/8 and the other 1/16 and the serve as end caps on the elevator and the stab respectively. BVM requires the builder to sand off material in order to account for these end caps. So I take my elevator and place it on the plans, do some measuring, marking, leaving some room for error etc and I sand my elevator down. Then I put all the wood in place with tape and have a look, and it appears the elevator is now too small even though it matches perfectly to the plans. I tripled checked, the plans tell you exactly where to trim to, it shows the elevator and the end caps very clearly.

On the stab, I removed the material up to the scribe lines like it says, but it appears I need to remove another 1/4"? I tried to line the stabs up with the plans but its impossible since they are not flat. I only sanded slightly on the elevators, not enough to remove 1/16" of material, I also checked against the other stab which I didnt touch yet, the same result.

So I am assuming the plans are correct, make the elevator match and sand off the end point of the stab to match, sound like a plan? The scribe lines may be wrong?

Also I assume these stabs are symetrical, so there is not a right and a left, but thought I would ask, they do not appear to be marked.

Finally a small thing I noticed, I suck at sanding. I have a 10" great planes alumunium sanding block and I still round things. Ill have to put 1/8" balsa down and flat out that elevator on the end. You can see in the pic I rounded the darn thing a bit, had to fix up my ailerons too. I had same issue with my YA f-18. I think the key may be to change sand paper more often when sanding carbon fiber.

I know some questions I ask are obvious but better safe than sorry, and I highly appreciate the help. I cannot get new parts for this so I am stuck fixing anything a ruin. You're saving me time!

Explanation of pics:
1) stab is trimmed to scribe lines, elevator matches plans, they dont line up.
2) comparing the inside of the stab where the elevators go, the black mark is where the elevator ends, note how the end of the stab goes past 0. (Between the 0 and the black mark is the length the plans have for the elevator + end caps)
3) measure the plans, the small end of the elevator, this measurement takes into account the end caps, the black mark is how long it is in the plans, compare this to #2.
4) A big picture of the plans of the stab, note the "trim to this line" comments.
5) measuring the elevator small end, to show it matches the plans exactly (may like .01 too big)