Joes Fuentes wrote: >>Someone had a whole Horz piece with elevator to sell me, though it >>occurred to me when I went to look at the lane in more detail that I'm not familiar with how the horz is attached?<<
Yes, the horizontal stabilizer spars are normally epoxied to plywood bulkheads that also capture the vertical stabilizer spars. It will be a pain to detach, and even worse will be that you'll have to get creative on how to get the new elevator past the aft vertical stab spar to install it. Unless you basically destroy the vertical stab, you'll have to make the elevator in two pieces and then epoxy or bolt them together to install the halves (less than optimal). Not very palatable in my book, but given that your elevator looks like it's broken in half anyway, you are already in that boat. I was going to point you to http://www.n56ml.com/misc.html (about a fourth of the way down) to show how I fastened my horizontal stab to the fuselage, rather than wood, so that's a viable method of reattaching a new h/s if you butcher up the spruce in the fuselage, but you've still got the elevator problem. I've fretted over a lot of similar problems while building my plane, and what I usually found to work best is simply get out the reciprocating saw and cut away all offending material and start over. Leave the vertical stab spars in place, but everything horizontal ought to go. You could leave the leading edge of the vertical stab there to keep from having to reform it, then build a new h/s and elevator assembly and slip it into the v/s spar slot, fasten with aluminum angle like I did mine (or wood, if you were careful and didn't damage it during the surgery), reglass the vertical stab, and you're done. Sounds like a real ordeal, but it has more appeal to me than trying to scab something on to the split h/s spar, and you're going to have to put a new elevator in there anyway. While you're at it, you could make the horizontal stab/elevator a little longer and help with the pitch sensitivity of the KR2. See http://www.n56ml.com/kht.html for an overview on how to build that assembly, and using the "new" NACA 63009 airfoil to improve effectiveness slightly (templates link on that page). Also see http://www.n56ml.com/kvs.html for a lot of details on what's under the skin of the vertical stab along with some fabrication and integration photos and narrative.. That's what I'd do with that mess. Just get the Sawzall out and try not to hurt anything you're going to keep. I've found that a beer first helps ease the pain. You're welcome to perform this operation some other way and prove me wrong, however... Mark Langford ML at N56ML.com website at http://www.N56ML.com --------------------------------------------------------
