Another bit of work in the books – and I guess the end of fiberglass work for the time being. Really all I had to do tonight was to hang the rudder and install the bottom fairing. This took bit longer than expected, though – apparently when I installed the spacer washers around the rudder stop way back when, I didn’t do it right. I put a regular AN3 washer above and a thin one below at each hole, but when I torqued down the rudder stop attach bolts, it squeezed the mount ears together where the rod end wouldn’t fit. Some measuring confirmed that the proper washer stickup would be two regular washers, so I extracted the thin washers and replaced them with regular ones. Fortunately this wasn’t too awful thanks to my washer wrenches.
With the rudder in, I clecoed the bottom in place and got to installing all the pop rivets. Next was feeding the tail light wire in. This time didn’t go quite as smoothly as before – the wire sort of curled up inside the bottom – but it was still easy to reach in there with my Romex hook, snag the wire, and pull it through.Then I connected the tail light, this time with heat shrink over the connectors since this should be the last time I do this:
Two screws installed, and everything is buttoned up:
I really like the way the bulkhead turned out on the forward end, and moving the rudder around bit confirms there’s no rubbing or stretching of the wire anywhere:
I guess at this point it’s time to get back to interior wiring again in earnest. I think the remaining work should go pretty quickly, and after that it’ll be the big step of installing the gear…