Vertical Stabilizer

Empennage, rudder, horizontal stabilizer, vertical stabilizer continued…

Rudder bottom fairing and taillight complete.

Spinner backing plates ready for installation.

Spinner screw holes drilled up to #19.

Empennage tip fairings and spinner gap fillers ready for installation.

The tip fairings are definitely not perfect, but they’re perfectly airworthy, so I’m fine with moving forward at this point. So far as I’m concerned, getting them perfect falls under paint shop surface prep – and they’ll be paid plenty for the work.

Left horizontal stabilizer tip fairing riveted in place.

Right horizontal stabilizer tip fairing riveted in place.

Vertical stabilizer tip fairing riveted in place.

Spinner plate assembly and front bulkhead drilled for nutplates and countersunk.

Empennage, rudder, horizontal stabilizer, vertical stabilizer underway

Waiting for epoxy to set up after each operation caused some delays this week (plus, my compressor died and had to be replaced), so there are several days of progress represented in today’s update.

All three empennage tip fairings are shown here having received their initial internal flox fillets and fiberglass layups.

One of the spinner gap fillers shown here with its flox fixes in place. They came out pretty nice and should look fine once they’re primed and painted.

The other spinner gap filler shown here with its flox fixes in place. They came out pretty nice and should look fine once they’re primed and painted.

First post-sanding pass at fitting the left horizontal stabilizer tip fairing to clear the elevator counterweight arm.

First post-sanding pass at fitting the right horizontal stabilizer tip fairing to clear the elevator counterweight arm.

First post-sanding pass at fitting the vertical stabilizer tip fairing to clear the rudder counterweight arm.

Taillight installed and Molex connector fitted to the wiring harness.

Lots of micro slathered on in this (hopefully final) step. Some sanding tomorrow and another coat of filler primer should see these puppies ready for riveting. Hopefully.

Empennage, horizontal stabilizer, vertical stabilizer continued…

Right horizontal stabilizer tip fairing patch marked for trimming.

Left horizontal stabilizer tip fairing patch marked for trimming.

Right horizontal stabilizer tip fairing patch trimmed and ready for glassing in place.

Left horizontal stabilizer tip fairing patch trimmed and ready for glassing in place.

Vertical stabilizer tip fairing trimmed and drilled in place.

Vertical stabilizer tip fairing drilled up to final hole size.

Vertical stabilizer tip fairing patch layup commencing.

Vertical stabilizer tip fairing patch layup happily snuggled under its peel ply for the night.

Fuselage, empennage, elevator, vertical stabilizer, rudder component installation

Vertical stabilizer mounted.

Aft wiring harness run through the vertical stabilizer rear spar, heat shrink applied (though not yet shrunk), and ground terminal installed.

Vertical stabilizer final-mounted with forward spar nut torqued and safetied.

ELT installation complete. Both twisted pair wires have been connected to the audio alert, the antenna coax has been connected to the ELT, and the DIN connector has been fabricated & connected to the ELT.

The only remaining ELT connection to be made is the forward end of the gray twisted pair to the remote on the panel. Once the panel has been installed, that’s probably the easiest connection to make!

Elevators installed!

Rudder installed. For the first time, the aft end has that distinctly RV look. The deflection was perfect – no adjustment to the rudder stops or side skins required, thankfully.

Throughout this project, I’ve been marveling at how much larger various pieces of the -14A are vs. their -8 versions. The tail just looks huge. Maybe ⅓ again larger, but I could be misremembering. In any case, it’s big.

Rudder installed. For the first time, the aft end has that distinctly RV look. The deflection was perfect – no adjustment to the rudder stops or side skins required, thankfully.

Right rudder cable installed.

Left rudder cable installed.

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