Over the summer of 2023 I had been going back and forth with another S-51 builder from Australia who had some spare (used) S-51 parts. Long story short, he had a bunch of stuff that I needed so we agreed to meet up at the Reno Air Races, as a centralized place to meet, which […]
Fitting elevators to horizontal stabilizer
In this post, I’m finally arriving to a huge milestone where I’m finally mating the elevators to the horizontal stabilizer. Again, in this post, this process wasn’t accomplished in an afternoon. It took me the better part of 2 months of working on and off trying to stay motivated through all the filing needed to […]
Elevator torque tubes
One last task before I get to fitting the elevators to the horizontal stabilizer. Today I’m going to finish the fitting of the elevator torque tube assemblies to each elevator. You might notice that these are now a light grey color (in previous posts they were painted black). I recently sent these out for powder […]
Elevator riveting – part 2
In this series I’m going to proceed through riveting the elevators. Please note that this didn’t all happen in one afternoon. There were times here where I worked alone and riveted what I could. Then there were also times where you need someone to help. The interior of the elevator is so narrow that as […]