I finally got around to putting the tail onto the plane. It had been completed two years ago in the class I took outside Atlanta. Problems awaited me though.
When I laid the horizontal stabilizor on the fuselage I came to the sinking realization that one of the angles needed for mounting was too short by a 1/4 inch on each side.
The edge distance would have been nil if I'd try to work with the angle that was on there. I would have been waiting for the tail to fly off everytime I pulled out of a loop. So I bit the bullet, ordered another $12 piece of angle from Van's and drilled out the old angle.
It really wasn't that bad, only about 75 rivets to drill. My dad and I had drill out about 200 rivets on one of the wing skins when we got to one outboard end and things didn't line up. I'm good at drilling out rivets at this point. I spent about 5 hours on the rework.
A couple of days later I had all the tail surfaces drilled to the plane.
The rudder stops slowed me down a bit. They limit the side-to-side travel of the rudder so that it doesn't bang into the elevators. The picture below is looking down on them from the top of the rudder. I built mine to the plan dimensions and found out that mine were a 1/4" too short (that's a familiar dimension) and didn't have the right angle. If you're building an RV, don't bother building the rudder stops in the plans. Cut up a manilla folder and make a template to get the exact angle between the rudder and the fuselage. Then you won't have to build two, like me. The one shown is one of the good ones.
I also managed to paint the instrument panel.
I painted the interior (Rustoleum Smoke Gray) and ran the vent lines for the fuel tanks. The interior will someday be covered with fabric but for now, to make it look a little better than just primer, I painted.
I assembled and painted the canopy frame.
And, I got the engine mount drilled to the fuselage. I can put the landing gear on and hang the engine now that the tail is on to balance it but I'll wait until the instruments are installed first. It's easier to reach inside without the airplane on the landing gear.
