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Thanks again for the helpful advice on my problem of water that
collected in the fuselage of my Legacy after flying in heavy rain for a
couple of hours and parking it uncovered on the ramp in the rain for two
days. The advice said that it was entering the tail (around the elevator
torque tube) while parked and not while flying.
I couldn't imagine how so much water could leak or drip into the
fuselage while parked. But when looking at the airplane and thinking about
the problem, I remembered that I used the seat belt as a gust lock while it was
parked on the ramp. That pulls the stick full aft, which (as we all know
from the "free and correct" check) raises the aft edge of the
elevator up. With the elevator tipped up, any water that lands on it
is going to run forward to the gap between it and the horizontal
stabilizer. So I had a surface the size of the elevator collecting water
and funneling some of it into the fuselage! Now I see how I
could collect so much water.
In response, I drilled a drain hole in the bottom of the
fuselage, just aft of the bulkhead that angles forward and attaches to the
belly several inches forward of the leading edge of the horizontal
stabilizer. I don't believe the assembly manual says anything about
that. A better solution is to keep the water out, but that will have to
wait until I have some reason to remove the elevator and rudder.
There was a comment about the effect on weight and balance as well as the
possibility of it freezing and jamming the flight controls. I don't think
a gallon of water, about eight pounds, would be a problem for weight and balance
for me, since I have a forward CG anyway.
As for the problem of freezing, during construction I drilled holes close
to the bottom of the bulkheads in my Legacy to run electrical conduit and the
rudder cable conduits and the holes are not water tight. It's pretty clear
that as water entered the tail, it ran forward until hitting a
bulkhead. It then puddled there until the water level rose
to the bottom of the lowest hole, then ran through it and
forward to the next bulkhead, etc. until it hit the aft spar and stopped
because it didn't rise to the height of the cutout for the flap actuator.
The water never rose high enough to even come close to the rudder bellcrank, so
I don't think that would be an issue. If you didn't drill holes near
the bottom of the bulkheads in your Legacy, that might be an issue. I
suppose there's always the possibility of a chunk of ice breaking loose in
turbulence and bouncing around in the tail and jamming the rudder
bellcrank.
There was also a comment about the possibility of water collecting inside
the flight controls, which could cause flutter. My flight controls
have drain holes, as described in the assembly manual. When I
discovered the water in the fuselage, I wiggled the flight controls back
and forth and did not hear or feel any water sloshing inside, so it seems either
the water never got inside or it drained out as intended.
Thanks again for the advice,
Dennis Johnson
Legacy, over 100 hours tach
time
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