The shop was pretty cold again this morning, so I turned the space heater on near the canopy and moved on to something else for a while. Today, that happened to be the lower empennage fairings. I've been meaning to get to this for a while so I can be one step closer to pulling the empennage off.

Way back on drawing 28, it tells you to rivet the lower tailcone skins to the longerons. When you get to this step, you discover taht you should have left some holes empty that are common to this fairing. Maybe there was a note on the print or instructions that I missed, but I sure don't remember seeing anything about this back then. At any rate, I drilled out the appropriate rivets,clecoed on the fairings, them measured and trimmed for the gap seal.

Vans doesn't give you any dimensions for trimming here. There is a section view in the print that shows what the finished product is supposed to look like and a note that if you want to skip the gap seal you can just make the gap 1/32"-1/16" here, but I don't like the idea of leaving a crack there for dirt and mud daubers or whatever to get in there.

I measured the seal and determined that a gap of 1/8" would fit, but I erred on the side of caution and tried to get this as close to 3/32" as possible. I reasoned that if I got it a little large it would be about right, and if it was 3/32 it wold be a nice snug fit.

Teh plans call for you to drill and tap the mount holes for #6 screws, but I'm inclined to just rivet them on. I don't really see why they would ever need to come off again other than perhaps if the seals get worn out and need to be replaced. On the other hand, If I rivet them during final assembly, there will end up being paint on the rubber edge seals and no paint under them, so if they shrink or whatever, you'll be able to see a paint gap on either the fuselage or the lower side of the horizontal.

I'll give this some thought and come back to it later.