Nov 27, 2022     Empennage Fairing - (12 hours)       Category: Fiberglass

As with many, my empennage fairing has fit issues. I began by cutting it in half along the spline. This helped me reposition things, then make more trims. Once things were close to correct, I began laying fiberglass cloth below and on top of the existing parts to fuse them together again. Several iterations of this provided a better fitting piece. I still need to do some final trimming and lots of finish work, but it should be a nice improvement.

  Feb 25, 2022     Bottom Rudder Cap - (4.5 hours)       Category: Fiberglass

The bottom rudder cap (fiberglass) has a series of challenges. I've elected to make mine removeable, so I installed nutplates rather than rivets. Also, the taildragger stinger interferes with the rudder cap so it must be trimmed differently to increase clearance. Did that and it looks good. The next issue is the front of the cap makes contact with the aft fuselage with rudder full deflection. I elected to remove this area, make scarf joints and add new fiberglass cloth. For now, I've added two plies of 9 oz. weave. Later, I'll make things look nice with micro and sanding. Appears to fit much better than before and no longer rubs the fuselage.