20070612

June 12, 2007

Vertical Stabilizer

Aft cut-off line drawn. Measured across with a large square up against the spar/aft skin.

Cut off with a dremel tool. Picture quality down a little.. experimenting with smaller file sizes.

A lot of people seem to have this gap in the leading edge, so I did not concern myself with it too much. I will fill it in with Marine-Tex filler.

This is where I first noticed that the fiberglass (FG) tip does not seem formed right. Since the "seam-line" is not down the center, I thought the deformation might just be an illusion. If you do not look at the front of the FG tip, the sides seem symmetrical, so I did not think much of it at this point.

Here you can see that the aft tip looks like it is veering off to the right. At the time, I did not realize it looked quit this bad. I did actually rivet everything together hoping that overall it was not so bad.. and still acceptable.

Again.. with my probably below average skils, as long as I could build a "safe" flying airplane, I would be happy. If it does not win anything at fly-ins, I really do not care. But once riveted, I looked it over from all angles and was NOT happy with it! It appeared the front top veered off to the left, and the aft portion veered off to the right. I called Larry T. the local EAA Chapt 88 Tech Counselor (which happens to also be a fellow Sonex builder). After doing some measuring, the aft tip was off by 3/8". We placed the rudder on and realized I forgot to line up the aft tip in-line with the aft rudder.

Here you can see where I forgot to use the rudder as a line-up point for th FG tip. Regardless, the tip still looked like it veered off to the right and at this point I was not sure what to do. I was sure of one thing... the FG tip must come off!

We carefully drilled the head off the rivet, then used a screw that was tapered down on the grinder, and hammered out the mandrel.

You can see I primed the surface so the seam-line would not dististract me from finding center line. Also, we had to cut quit a bit off the front tip in order for the trailing edge to fit even with the rudder. All my holes previously drilled are now gone. In the scheme of things, we also bent the aluminum rib that this piece fits over. Which means I must order one from Sonex... I am really wishing I had the time and skills to make my own ribs. This is becoming expensive!!!

Shot of the front. Until next time...