Author Archives: pclifton

Fiberglass and missteps

Next up, time to remove all that extra material on the edges and sand to roughly match the profile of the bottom. Since my intent was to cover all of this with micro, I also beveled the edges a bit … Continue reading

Posted in Empennage, Fiberglass | Hours Logged: 2

More vertical tip work

Next up was the light pad itself. The first thing I noticed was that the pad wasn’t actually flat, on each side of the seam it seemed to slop back a bit. So I started hitting this up with 40 … Continue reading

Posted in Empennage, Fiberglass | Hours Logged: 2

More rudder fiberglass work

Of course, this wasn’t exactly super precise, and I was conservative with the layout as well, so after making the initial cuts I spent a lot of time carefully expanding the cutout, with repeated trial fitting. I made another sort of … Continue reading

Posted in Empennage, Fiberglass | Hours Logged: 6

Vertical stab and rudder tips

One possible way to address this would be to not insert it all the way, taking care of the alignment issue when the mount holes got drilled. The problem with doing this is that the flange now doesn’t cover the … Continue reading

Posted in Empennage, Fiberglass | Hours Logged: 2.5

Starting on empennage tips

And one trimmed tip slipped into place:

Posted in Empennage, Fiberglass | Hours Logged: 2.5

Vertical stab mounting

Posted in Empennage, Fuselage | Hours Logged: 1

Elevator rigging done(ish)

Next was adding the aft push tube, between the bellcrank and the elevator horns – one last trip in and out of the tail (for now, at least), followed by hooking up the elevators. For this last bit, unlike everything … Continue reading

Posted in Empennage, Fuselage | Hours Logged: 1

More elevator rigging

Freedom of movement was a different matter. While I could move the sticks through their full range of motion, there was a weird sort of “bump” feeling a bit aft of the neutral position. Some investigation revealed the issue: one … Continue reading

Posted in Fuselage | Hours Logged: 1

Elevator rigging

So today I picked up where I left off last night, starting with getting the forward elevator push tube loosely in its place under the seat floors. Then I got to spend some time reviewing the annoyance of getting this … Continue reading

Posted in Fuselage | Hours Logged: 3

Tailcone closeout stuff

Posted in Fuselage | Hours Logged: 2