Category: Horizontal Stabilator

Installed the fiberglass stabilator fairings. Most of the time spent was cutting the flange, filing out notches for some rivets and rib flanges, match drilling through the fairing, and finally riveting in place. I wasn’t tracking the hours closely (and I was doing other things in the hangar), but less than 4 hours all told.…

All the metal work on the Horizontal Stabilator is done! Spent the weekend (and a bit) reaching this milestone. Getting the skins prepped went pretty quickly. Deburring the edges and holes and priming the inside. Do the punched holes need deburring? Well, there’s no match drilling or final size drilling required, but the punch does…

I received the backordered part for the Horizontal Stabilator, the counterweight arm, in June and thus moved back to completing the skeleton assembly. The backordered part didn’t block me completely, I could certainly have worked ahead a little, but I didn’t really want to put the ribs on prior to getting the counterbalance arm drilled…

The horizontal stabilator is the horizontal control surface at the back of the airplane. Unlike a separate fixed horizontal stabilizer and a moveable pair of elevators, the RV-12 employes a “stabilator” which is a combination. The whole assembly moves. I started on the spar box, the structural spine. My RV-12 empennage kit is down to…

The ASTs are the Anti Servo Tabs. Completely different than what I thought they were. When originally looking at the plans, I thought they were trim tabs, i.e. for trimming pitch. The RV-12 uses a sensitive horizontal “stabiliator” – the entire surface moves rather than a more traditional horizontal stabilizer + elevator design. So these…