Fairings, continued

I pulled the foam plugs out of the HS tips. They came out without much trouble… the packaging tape did it’s job preventing the epoxy from bonding to the plug. With the plugs out, there was just the single thin fiberglass layer.

To strengthen the tip, I laid up two more layers of fiberglass on the inside of the one I did last night. Since it’s around 90 degrees (sweltering for a MN boy) in the shop, the new layers cured fast enough for me to work with them tonight yet.

While I was waiting on the HS tips to cure, I cut the VS tip to size and match drilled it to the VS. Even though I didn’t cut down the rear edge (that faces the rudder) there is quite a gap. Since I’m thinking about adding a video camera in this tip, I’m just going to leave it as is… at it will be heavily modified at that time.

After working on the VS and grabbing a bite to eat, the HS tips had cured enough to work with. So I clecoed them up to the HS and started filing and sanding them down to get a nice gap between the tips and the elevators.

Each tip also had a slight bulge on one side, so it was thicker than the elevator. Well, that’s nothing Mr. Power Sander can’t fix!

After the power sander, the glass was getting a bit thin in a few places, so I laid up another few layers of glass cloth on the inside. Tomorrow, I’ll finish roughing in my gaps. I’m not going to let my inner perfectionist out until the whole plane is ready for finishing before paint. A lot can happen between now and then!