February has been a bit of a slower month in making big progress. I’ve spent a few evenings working on several different things. I got some new shelving units from an old storage unit that my mom was getting rid of, and they sat in the hangar for a few weeks before I finally got some time to assemble them and reorganize a lot of the stuff we have.

I spent an evening with my wife moving the old shelves and workbenches to opposite sides of the hangar, and moved the new shelves to the back wall (they’re much bigger) and just general organizing of tools and parts and a lot of clean up.

We also made a trip to the Container Store and got more plastic boxes for stuff. Its always satisfying when putting things back on shelves and seeing how organized it is at the end.

I came back a few days later and worked through a short to-do list of things inside the plane. I needed to shorten the elevator pushrods so that the bellcrank would rotate aft a small amount. When I pushed the elevator fully forward, it would get a little “squishy” and if I pushed harder, it would then hit the forward (down) stop. I figured the only thing that could be causing this is that I was over rotating the autopilot servo, which is attached to the bellcrank. After shortening the pushrods, I reinstalled everything and tested the forward (and aft) stop, everything hit their stops with no problem or squishiness felt anymore. I then torqued all the bolts and marked them with torque paint.

As I was working on the larger aft pushrod, I noticed that the aft fuselage skin still needed to be riveted. Its the portion right under the empennage, totaling ~50 rivets. I’m surprised I didnt notice this earlier, but It would have been caught when I started doing the fiberglass work on the empennage fairing. I realized I needed to remove the horizontal stabilizer in order to sufficiently gain access to rivet these holes. I proceeded to remove the tail and then riveted the aft skin with no issues and then reinstalled the vertical and horizontal stabilizers.

Now that I have the elevator and rudder off the plane, I will be working on the fiberglass tips.