Thursday December 7, 2006
Rudder TE (Rudder)
2.0 Hours

While I was watching NASA attempt to launch the space shuttle tonight, I continued tightening the fit of the rudder trailing edge wedge countersinks. Then I went ahead and drilled the rudder trailing edge to the scrap angle.

The fit still isn't as good as it could be, so I'll continue fine tuning it, but I'm happy with the progress. The important thing is that the trailing edge is now straight.

If I was going to do this again, I would specifically follow the advice from the construction manual and use one of the skins to drill the angle, but before it was dimpled. Doing it this way, I was drilling through the pre-existing holes in both skins and the wedge. I was extremely careful, but there's no way I didn't take a little extra metal while drilling that thick angle.

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