[27012008] - Empennage

Building the Empennage

27/01/2008 - Assembly of Tail plane

Time to get the horizontal stabiliser back down from its storage place in the garage roof! Once down it was necessary to trim the skins on the outboard ends to accommodate the different style counter balance weights that are now sent with the kit. The two pictures show cutting and rounding off the edges to allow the elevators to fit

I bought some temporary assembly pins from Cleveland but they needed to be cut down with a hack saw as they were a bit too long; but once cut down about 5mm then they were perfect. Elevators attached...after some adjustment of course. A bit fiddly but soon had a uniform and correct gap all the way round.

Then it was time to hang the rudder onto the fin. And hey presto a working empennage.

At this point the only things I have not down are

	Drill the centre hole for the horns which you can just see in the 3rd picture above
	Fitted all the Fibreglass; as everyone waits to do this so I will do the same
	Corrected one pop rivet in the rudder leading edge that I am not happy with

So after 183.5 hours of building the Empennage is complete...well there abouts anyway. Van's recommend that it takes 200 hrs to build the empennage; so that means I have 16.5 hrs left to work on the things I have left; I think that sounds about right.

Empennage Done...