The rudder has been mounted! I’m quickly wrapping up work on the back end of the plane. The rudder was fairly uneventful to mount, though I anticipate substantially more work to get it hooked up…
The elevators were mounted and hooked up. This was not without an issue with drilling, in which the holes in the elevator horn came too close to the edge and had to be fill welded shut for another shot at drilling. The vertical stab was also first trial fit, then mounted to the deck of […]
Well, being done with the canopy for the time being, I need somewhere else to point my efforts, and mounting the tail surfaces here in the garage has been recommended by many a folk. The idea is to follow the instructions as if this were final construction, mounting the horizontal stabilizer, then elevators, hooking up […]
With the windscreen glued on to the plane, I now needed to create a smooth fairing. Arguably more intense than the rear fairing, there was some criteria I had to hit: I dove head first in, and after 6 hours of epoxy, glass, and related supplies, I wound up with what I felt was an […]
After three-four sessions of primer and sanding, the skirt was finally in a condition where I felt comfortable attaching it. The underside of the skirt required white primer, where it would show, to match the cockpit, but black primer where attaching to the canopy and side skirts. (The black primer is the first component of […]
The canopy, windscreen, and side skirt junction wound up about as clean as I could have asked for, highlighted here in the photo.
I love how the wet paint highlights how uniform the skirt actually is.
Gluing the windscreen on the airplane was nerve-wracking. Sika Flex was again the weapon of choice, and even though I’m feeling more confident with the Sika Flex system, it’s still a messy and permanent approach to windscreen and canopy attachment. The important part was getting both clamping and spacing worked out. Spacing was required to […]