Empennage - Fiberglass

2003-11-11 - Fix Screw-up, Paint Fiberglass Tips. (3.0 Hrs).

11/14/03-11/22/03 - I have been working like crazy to finish up the empennage so I can start on the wings, which arrived last Monday. I had a little work to do on the elevator fiberglass tips, and I wanted to bag all of the empennage pieces and put them outside on my storage platform.

Also, I just had to try once more to paint the elevator and HS fiberglass tips before I put everything away. Two parts came out great, one needs more paint, and my experiment on the already-painted part was a failure. I tried to use less paint to keep the paint from running, and that worked, but one part is under painted. I tried to use a light fog coat on the already painted tip, and what I ended up with was a part that has a light fog on it (it's rough). You need enough paint to get the paint to flow, but not too much, or it will run. This is very tricky, and will take some more practice, but when it works, the paint is very nice.

The screw-up below is the last work that I will do on the empennage for awhile.

Error

This is my fix for the screw-up where I removed too much lead from the left elevator counterbalance. I kept filing and filing, to get the fiberglass tip to fit over the counterbalance. I thought I had lots of weight to work with, then I noticed that I had removed the trim tab. I was a few ounces too light, so I epoxied some lead weights to the inside of the fiberglass tip. Not pretty, but effective.

The part in front needs more paint, but did not run. The two small parts look pretty good, except they fell over while painting, so they have some dirt embedded in them. The part in the back has a nice rough fog coat, which was a failure. The good news, is that there were no runs on any of the parts, so I am getting better.