Monthly Archives: November 2019

New Sling Pilots community website & forum

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A small non-direct building post for a change to talk about the new Sling Pilots community website & forum.

We recently had a discussion on the Sling Builders Facebook group about the very visible growth of the Sling Airplane community. With the bigger size, the community is slowly growing beyond the size of a Facebook group. There are also some people do not use Facebook, so a separate forum allows more inclusion for everyone.

So armed with that, we have started a new community organized standalone website and discussion forum that will hopefully help both active builders, people interested in possibly becoming builders and active Sling Pilots to come together and discuss all things Sling.

Check it out at https://www.slingpilots.com/

Cheers,
Philip

Finishing the Elevator

Hours: 2.5
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With most of the preparations out of the way and half of the skins riveted, I took one more session to finishing the Elevator.

There was only one extra part I had to do for 3 of the rivets that were on the bottom edge. In order for them to fit correctly, I had to shorten the rivets so they wouldn’t protrude out.
Rivet too long to fit Fitting rivet after I shortened it I mounted the rivet in my bench vise and filed it down to size Shortened Rivets on the right and one with normal length on the left

Aside from that, I just went to town and pulled the rest of the few hundred rivets.
Time to pull some rivets Halfway done riveting the skins Final set of rivets ready to be riveted Riveting the Trim Tab

The last part on the riveting side was the front lip.
Clecoing the front lip Riveting the front lip

One of the holes on the lip has to be enlarged to fit a grommet for the wiring for the Elevator Trim Tab. I enlarged the hole using my step drill bit and then installed a snap bushing.
Marked out the hole that needs to be enlarged for the wiring Marked out the size on the step drill bit Hole enlarged and Snap Bushing installed

The last part was to install the center balance counterweight. I did some test fitting with this, but the AN3-13A bolts that one of the versions of the manual that I have mentioned are too short, so I’ll check with the factory on the proper length.
Test fitting the Balance Counterweight - the bolts are too short

With that being said, the general assembly of the Elevator is completed:

Timelapse of the complete construction of the Elevator

With the Elevator construction completed, I’ve also finished my video timelapse of the process:

Riveting the Elevator skins

Hours: 3.5
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With the final preparations and alignments of the Elevator done, the last task is to rivet up the Elevator skins.

Horizontal Stabilizer and Elevator temporary joined for alignment and looking good

The process is pretty straightforward, but there are a lot of rivets to be pulled, so it’s a lot of repetition, so I spread the work out over a few sessions.
Setting up rivets Almost done with the left underside Finished left underside

I first did the half of the bottom, both left and right side, and then finished up the left side completely, followed by the right side.
Setting up the final few rivets for the right underside Bottom of the entire Elevator completed

For the Trim Tab control tabs I had to get out the close quarter wedge.
Using the close quarter wedge to be able to attach the rivets for the Trim tab Control

After I finished the entire bottom half of the Elevator I flipped it around and put a small padding onto the Trim Tab control so it can’t dig into the Elevator skin.
Protection for the Trim Tab control

Final Elevator fitting

Hours: 2.5
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After reinforcing parts of the fiberglass tips for the Elevator for the front section that is countersunk to support the flush rivets, I finished fitting of the right side of the Elevator.

When I finished the alignment of the left side of the Elevator, I ran out of clecos, so I bought a couple more when I was at Oshkosh so I could properly put the Elevator together and get everything to align correctly.

So the first order of business was to finish clecoing everything including the (correct) control tabs for the Trim Tab.
Time to cleco the right side of the Elevator Everything clecoed together including the Trim Tab

With that out of the way, I moved on to do the fitting for the right side fiberglass piece. It took a little bit of aligning and filing away a tiny bit from the back so that the fiberglass piece can slot into the metal.

Once that looked all good, I started to do the match drilling of the holed into the fiberglass.

Time to drill some holes into the fiberglass tip First hole drilled and clecoed Continuing the match drilling All holes drilled

Now the only last part to do was to countersink the front parts of the fiberglass tips in order to allow the flush rivets to sit in there. It took a bit of back and forth to calibrate my microstop countersink attachments to ensure I had a good flush fitting.

Marked out for the holes that need to be countersunk Finished countersinking the holes Flush fit of the left side Alignment checks on the right side