Empennage fitting complete doing random tasks
Still at it, slowly but surely. I completed fitting the full empennage and the upper and lower fairings. I figured it was finally time to rivet the fiberglass tips on. The failure mode of the bolts holding the elevator counter weights on is not pretty. I decided to pot the nut and bolts with epoxy and flox. That assembly is *never* coming apart. I’ll sleep better. With that cured, I pop riveted all of the tips on. Some of the rivets dropped the steel end into the tip. This resulted in these little suckers rolling around in the sealed tip. I’ll figure out a way to get most of them out at some point.
It was also time to figure out how to run the wires for the tail lights. There sure isn’t a lot of information on exactly where to punch the holes. I decided to put a single hole for a snap bushing just above the tie-down bracket. This will allow me to run the wires almost straight into the rudder pivot area and down into the rudder bottom. We’ll see when it all goes together.
I machine countersunk the lower empennage fairing attach holes then tapped what was left of the longeron for the screws. Once again, not a whole lot of information to be had about how others did this. Also, I stuck on the rudder stops for good. Tanya didn’t feel like helping rivet so I got lazy and used a couple of pop rivets. These could totally be bucked with a little ambition.
I removed and stored (in the spare bedroom) all of the empennage pieces. I decided to fabricate the angle that stiffens the top of the instrument panel. I’m just looking for stuff to do at this point (delaying wing fitting?) and that took a full evening. I had a small epiphany while trying to figure out how I was going to finish all of the notch cuts. It wouldn’t fit in my belt sander and I didn’t feel like spending a full day filing all those notches by hand. I used some roloc sanding disks in the air grinder. I had forgotten I had this magic little tool (the sanding disks). It knocked out finishing all of the notches in no time. I was pretty happy to have found the perfect tool for the job, one of my favorite things. Also of a random nature, I decided to cut the slot for the canopy latch mechanism. I placed the template, drilled the holes and cut down the center of the notch with a dremel cutoff wheel. Then I attacked it with files by hand. That only took an hour or so. I’m sure I’ll have to open the slot up a little more when I get the latch parts cleaned up and fitted.
