Assemble Empennage
January 13th
Some builders seem to skip this section until it is time to get everything all assembled, I guess to save space. We decided to finish the entire empennage because the wings and fuselage are coming by the end of the month and there would be mixed pieces of the kit laying all over the place. Also we were afraid that we might forget about problem areas or certain things we thought might need extra consideration and have to re-learn it all over again when it was time to assemble. So we press ahead and see how things really comes together.
As you can tell by the photos its a very exciting time because all the pieces that were laying around are starting to get attached and that they all seem to line up and make sense. I did notice that there were a lot of people around when the big pieces were being attached. So we had fun taking a few more shots than we probably really needed.
You might also notice that there are pieces of the almost fabricated wing cradle laying around. Since the next kit arrives soon we pushed hard to get this done. We were warned ahead of time to have that ready to go when the truck arrived. The large metal shelves that held the rudder, elevators, and fixed pieces was also removed last week to make room for this cradle and fuselage area.
No huge problems were encountered as we stepped all the way through 11-6
The push tube was interesting and in case anyone is interested we used the alternate method of priming the inside of the tube which basically meant we sprayed the primer in both ends, dried with a blow dryer then riveted the rod ends into place. Everything came together nicely.
January 20th
We made adjustments to the work area today getting ready for the QB pieces to arrive and finishing up the tail cone work. We spent most of the day trimming, sanding, de-burring, priming and cleco-ing the trim mount bracket and associated linkages. Mostly page 11-8 work...we stopped short of actual riveting things together since someone decided to borrow our rivet squeezer and we didn't feel like dragging the hose across the hangar floor.
January 31st
Huge headway today to completing the full tail feathers. Mostly completing items such as cover plates, trim cable attach brackets, trim cables, and fairings. The fairings are still a work in progress as the hangar is tool cold for the fiberglass work to cure. We'll call section 11 complete and catch up on the fairings as we get them finished up in 12.
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