Right elevator counterweight ribs

Over the last few days I tweaked the right elevator’s counterweight ribs to adjust their alignment. These ribs are match drilled back-to-back, then fitted to the counterweight skin which encloses the lead counterweight itself. In this picture, you’ll see the ribs clecoed to the right elevator spar. There were a couple of problems with this assembly. First, the small tabs on the inside rib don’t quite align with the prepunched holes in the spar (the circled area in the above picture). Actually, the holes weren’t even close. I called Van’s, and was told to leave the holes as-is, and just match drill as required when fitting this assembly to the skin. That will mean a couple of ‘figure eight’ holes in the tabs, but apparently that’s ok. Problem solved.

The other problem is that the ribs must lie flat together for their flange rivet holes to align with the counterweight skin. I had to spend extra time adjusting the flutes on these ribs to get the rivet holes as straight as possible. I also received some good suggestions from Roberta Hegy on re-radiusing the flange bends; doing this helps snug up the ribs together and reduces the distance between the two lines of rivet holes. Thanks Roberta!