Tail Fit and Fairing Finishing

Last post I talked about the "unscheduled" paint day. I stopped working on the ignition install and painted all of my interior stuff due to some unexpected nice weather. Well I have another "work detour". I have an opportunity to get my non fuselage parts painted. I'll explain...I was looking into having my plane painted, after I was finished building and flying, at a paint shop. They take around 12 weeks to paint the plane. I didn't like the idea of flying around "naked" without paint for the entire summer and then having the plane down for 12 weeks after I finally had it flying. Then opportunity knocks. A friend of mine, Kris, and his Dad, Donny, stop by to check out the plane. Donny has refinished cars and does body work and painting. Well, you can see where this is going, we reached an agreement to have him paint the plane. This works out to my advantage in that he can go ahead and start painting anything that is not attached to the fuselage in his shop and then come back to my shop and paint the fuselage. Saves a bunch of my time and I only lose out on the few weeks it takes to the paint the fuselage. But it does mean that everything needs to be ready to paint. So I changed gears again and went back to finishing up some things I had put off years ago to completely finish everything for paint.

I started back on the tail after almost 3 years. I never finished this before because it takes up a lot of room. I needed to install the tail and then install all the fairings to prepare them for paint. Tail step one...install horizontal stabilizer. After some simple measurements to ensure it is straight, just drill some holes and install.

Shim plates in place and drilled.

Thought I'd show how the elevator horns install into the tailcone.

Elevators in place and in clamped in neutral trailing position to drill holes into the elevator horns that mate up with the control tube inside the tailcone. At this point you ensure you have the needed travel on the elevators. They are supposed to travel up and down a certain amount of degrees. I just used my iPhone to take the measurements, simple, accurate, and effective.

Installed the vertical stabilizer and rudder. Then, after trimming, installed the fairings. I eventually made some pointed guide pins from #10 bolts to help install the rudder. Otherwise it was a pain to get the attach points to line up correctly. You have to install and remove the rudder several times during all of this so I suggest you just make them early.

Here is a picture of the transition fairing sitting in place. It's not trimmed yet. But looks good.

The horizontal stabilizer tip fairings take some fancy trim work to allow clearance for the elevator and its tip fairing through full elevator movement.

After trimming the stabilizer tip fairing, which results in a complex curve on both the top and bottom. I decided to use some scrap door fiberglass material to make the aft closeout. I first taped the closeout in place and then took the tip off the stabilizer. Then fiberglassed inside of the tip using flox to make a bead along the joining corners and then a layer of glass cloth over that. I then clecoed it back onto the stabilizer to ensure it dried in the shape needed to fit.

After drying I just sanded down the mating edges. Done. And looks great.

I trimmed down the intersection fairing and then drilled all the holes and countersinks.

The plane looked so cool with the tail on!

Window Edging

I've been holding off on writing this blog until I finished up the task. Well, it took A LOT longer than what it was supposed to. 

Dates and Times

April

Wed 30 -1.5hrs- finished light wiring 

May

Sat 3  -5.5hrs- window edging prep

Sun 4 -5.5hrs- window edging laid up

Mon 5 -1.5hrs- window sanding and disaster

Tues6 -1.0hr- sanding off old stuff

Wed 7 -1.25hrs- more sanding

Sat 10 -6.5hrs- window prep and laid up new layer of fiberglass

Sun 11 -3.0hrs- more sanding

Tues13 -0.5hr- more sanding

Sat 17 -2.5hrs- so much sanding

Sun 18 -3.0hrs- more sanding and cleaned out the shop

I started off masking and sanding all of the windows. I used the same tape as I did for the windscreen fairing.

A closer shot of everything taped off. I used the same little jig tool to draw a line around the window offset from the edge to place the tape. The radius's at each corner are from circles I printed off on paper of many different sizes. I then cut out the radius I wanted which made a good template for the curve.

Here is a shot of the edge of the door. You can see how I placed tape around the entire perimeter of the door, two layers of duct tape and a layer of electrical tape. I then cut it even with the outer skin of the door. This will result in an even gap around the entire door. You can also see in this picture how the door has a nice sloping curve and the cabin top does not resulting in a slight misalignment.

I then taped around the edge of the door and onto the outer skin to prevent fiberglass adhering to the door itself. In this image you can also see a flat spot on the cabin top in relation to the door....its right in the middle of the picture.

With everything taped up I laid my first bit of fiberglass. First I filled the gaps around the edges of the windows and then laid 2" fiberglass cloth down. The strips were cut from the same type cloth used in the windscreen. I only did around the top of the windscreen and the back windows at this point.

The next day I came out to start sanding everything down when I discovered that nothing was sticking. The glass cloth was peeling off in strips....not good.

This resulted in days of sanding and scraping to get all the old stuff off the plane. It was a major pain in the butt and very disappointing. This set me back a few weeks of work.

I think I know what happened:
1. Original: sanded with orbital sander and 60 grit paper. The orbital didn't "scratch" up the surface enough. New Layup: used 60 grit paper and sanded in 90 degree patterns creating a "scratched" cross pattern around the entire perimeter.

2. Original: cleaned with acetone and therefore smoothed out the ridges from sanding.
New Layup: cleaned with just water.

3. Original: Laid cloth down and applied a thickened epoxy. I was thinking of preventing runs but resulted in cloth not absorbing enough of the resin to harden and adhere properly.
New Layup: wetted entire perimeter with just epoxy and then did a very wet layup of the fiberglass using non thickened epoxy.

The second time I did this the layup looked much nicer than the first. Practice is everything.

This time I also picked up a flexible sanding block and adhesive backed paper. The sanding block is very important to getting a nice gentle curve. VERY important...basically not possible without it.

The second layup stood up to the sanding and trying to peel it off. So with my new sanding block I started sanding, sanding, and sanding. Here is a picture of the old intersection I showed above. Looks much nicer now.

An overall picture. So much sanding. I am not really enjoying this part. Fiberglass dust is awfull stuff.

I finally got a point that I can say I am finished for now. The dust was so bad in the shop dunes were starting to form. I just pulled everything out and blew it off with the air hose. My next goal is to finish a few things up in the tail so I can rivet that last skin on. Then I will finish the rest of the body work for good.