empennage fairing and rudder tail strobe
Spent some time adjusting the rudder stop. It is ready to rivet. Some people report that the stop fabricated per the plans just doesn’t work. I believe that but mine worked out fine. I also completed the tail light mounting in the rudder tip. This was kind of fun. I went digging through my boxes of old computer parts for the proper hardware. Any self respecting techie will have a healthy stash of 4-40 stand-offs. I drilled a hole, put a stand-off in, put the whelen supplied nut on the back (after a little careful grinding on the back side), and put some l0ctite and a drop of epoxy on the back side to hold the nut. I did remove the mounting ears on the light assembly for things to fit right. All good to go.
Alright, after my initial inspection of the Vans empennage upper fairing, I couldn’t imagine that I would be able to get it to work. I’ll admit that I was prepared to order a new one that fit from bob at fairings-etc but that felt like admitting defeat. Another day later and I decided that I would give this ugly looking fairing a try. After lots of study and just plain looking at it, I realized that it just needed to be trimmed a whole lot and it might be fine. So I attacked it with the cutoff wheel in the pneumatic angle grinder. Oh, yeah, there is a picture of the perfect suite of tools for trimming fiberglass parts. The big 1.5″ drum sander (home depot) in the air grinder with a coarse drum on it is awesome for rough trimming to a line. As always, my fiberglass trimming procedure includes clamping the shop vacuum hose to the bench and directing all trimming dust into the vacuum. This really does well in keeping the dust under control. I’ll buy or build a sanding box when I build the next airplane. For those not aware, ideally when sanding parts on a bench, you could sand on a perforated surface with a powerful vacuum pulled under it so all the particles go down through the surface and into the vacuum. Yep, perfect for fiberglass work.
So I trimmed the empennage fairing extensively and hit it with the heat gun in some strategic spots and it looks pretty good. I put some micro filler on some spots that I’ll finish off, then I’ll drill attachment holes. The important part here is that I win, not the fairing :).
