Tail feathers

Wow, has it really been almost a month?  With this covid thing it feels like time both flies and crawls depending on what I'm doing.  Since I'm still working from home (which means more than normal hours) I feel like I get less time to work on the 10.  Combine that with the annual inspection on the 9 and that leave precious little progress.  Oh well, I'm still making progress and its still a lot of fun!

So this past few weeks have been dedicated to working on the tail. Assembling the horizontal stabilizer, elevators, vertical stabilizer and the rudder and then finishing the fiberglass work that they all have is the theme of the past few weeks.

Drilling the hole that aligns and secures the elevators is critical and one area that is easily messed up.  I know a lot of people end up pulling the elevator back off, welding the hole closed, and then re-drilling.  I had to do that with the 9 because my elevators were not perfectly in sync.  With the 10 I decided to use my 3D printer to print up a perfectly sized block with the appropriate hole in the middle so that I could clamp the elevator horns together while drilling.  This worked out wonderfully!  You can see the 3D printed block with the bolt installed after drilling.

The horizontal stabilizer with the elevators installed.  It looked so cool I had to take a picture.

Drilling the horizontal stabilizer hold down bolts.  This is the bottom side.  You can see the castellated nut I used on the first one to hold it in place while I drilled the second hole (in between the two nuts)

My mask that I use when I go out in public.  In this picture I was in the waiting room as Mariah prepared for her surgery.

Rudder work complete including the fiberglass and the tail light/strobe mount installed.  

Elevators complete and ready for final assembly.  I have them stored above the garage door until its time to take them to the airport.

Horizontal stabilizer end end cap fiberglass complete!

Vertical Stabilizer fiberglass complete.

Right side horizontal stabilizer fiberglass complete.

This is the intersection fairing. These never seem to fit properly without lots of work.  This one wasn't too bad but you can see in this picture the gap that I had to fill/reshape.  

Perspective is odd but this is the front of the intersection fairing looking down.  A small gap here that had to be filled and shaped.

And here it is after a little work.  It fits nicely around the leading edge of the horizontal stabilizer as well as the leading edge of the vertical stabilizer.  The gap you see is because I don't have all holes filled with Cleco's.