So I took another look at the H/S tip fairings and realized I had a problem. It seemed like I had plenty of room inside the ends of the H/S for the flanges on teh fairings, but on closer inspection, they were riding up on the flutes of the end ribs.

I got out the dremmel and scalloped the flanges to relieve them where there was interference, which is shown in one of the pictures below. Ultimately, I still wasn't happy with the idea of the fairing flange riding inside the flanges of the end ribs so I trimmed the entire fairing flange back for clearance.

That resulted in about 6/32 e.d. for a couple of the rivet holes in the fiberglass, so I may bond in a light aluminum backing strip around the rivet holes, especially since theres going to be the back side of a pop rivet. Haven't decided yet, because there isn't much meat there for pop rivets to hold onto, but then again, there's no real stress on them either and the leading edge gets epoxied in place so it's not like it can go anywhere.

Anyway, thats a decision for another day.

Decided to take a break from H/S work and started trimming the R-911 lower rudder cap. This proved to be more detailed than just trimming to the mold lines.

Because this is a tail dragger, the rudder cap needs to be high enough to clear the tailwheel spring, as seen on drawing 27. The mold lines have it sitting low enough that it flows as a continuation of the belly skin loft line, which would look cool on a 7A, but isn't going to work here.

I looked as several build logs to see how people have dealt with this. Found some where they had cut off the bottom of that fairing and reglassed it flatter, but that doesn't seem necessary in my case. Other guys have just positioned the whole thing higher by trimming more off it, and thats what I ultimately ended up doing.

At this point I've got a pretty decent fit, but it required trimming the t.e. as much as possible ( the position of the tail light is the limiting factor here) and the front end 3/8 more than where I was at originally. This leaves about 1/4 inch clearance with the tailwheel spring at the leading edge, and obviously a ton more as they diverge aft, which should be plenty.

Fiberglass requires a respirator and makes a huge mess, so I didn't get many pictures while I was trimming a little bit at a time until I got a decent fit. I'll continue this next time and try to get some better pictures of the finished product.