{"id":3842,"date":"2018-11-23T10:24:05","date_gmt":"2018-11-23T15:24:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mightyrv.com\/?p=3842"},"modified":"2018-11-26T11:23:43","modified_gmt":"2018-11-26T16:23:43","slug":"a-few-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mightyrv.com\/?p=3842","title":{"rendered":"A few tips"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m awaiting delivery of the avionics harness from Approach Fast Stack so I decided to tackle a task I’ve been avoiding for more than 13 years – fitting fiberglass tips to the horizontal stabilizer, elevators, vertical stabilizer and rudder. I’ve said before that I hate working with fiberglass and that’s still the case.<\/p>\n

Van’s ships the elevator tips with no front end and recommends fairing over the counterweight with an epoxy\/flox fill, essentially making it non removable. I decided to add a thin fiberglass layer over but not attached to the counterweight so that I can remove the tip later on if necessary.<\/p>\n

Tip prep was simply sanding down the front surfaces to give the layup something to bond do.<\/p>\n

\"Elevator<\/a><\/p>\n

I laid up 3-4 layers of 9 oz BID cloth over the counterweights and front of the tip. Before doing that I covered the elevator and counterweight with clear packing tape as a mold release.<\/p>\n

\"Fiberglass<\/a><\/p>\n

The layup initially looked too thick but when I sanded it down to match the elevator and HS tip there wasn’t much left – but there really doesn’t need to be.<\/p>\n

\"Initial<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s the inside of the tip after removal..it conformed pretty nicely but I had some voids in the cloth that required some additional epoxy to fill.<\/p>\n

\"Interior<\/a><\/p>\n

After sanding and before priming…looks good!<\/p>\n

\"Finish-sanded<\/a><\/p>\n

The HS tips come without a back end and there’s no requirement to add one but they look better and more “finished” if they’re closed – so that’s what I did, using the foam technique in Section 5 of the instructions and and a sheet of pink foam insulation from the aircraft construction department at Home Depot.<\/p>\n

\"HS<\/a><\/p>\n

The same foam closeout technique was used on the VS tip…already done in the pic below.<\/p>\n

The rudder upper fairing was a really poor fit, a common complaint with previous versions of fiberglass parts shipped by Van’s. I had to build up the front end with balsa and fiberglass, and apply epoxy and microbaloons to fill gaps on either side.<\/p>\n

\"Upper<\/a><\/p>\n

Surprisingly, the rudder lower end cap fit pretty well when trimmed to the scribe marks applied by Van’s. I decided to make it removable by adding #6 platenuts to fairing attach points on the rudder.<\/p>\n

\"Lower<\/a><\/p>\n

The lower end cap looks good now, but pop-riveting the nav\/strobe light attach plate caused the fairing to crack (shit!) so I had to mix up some epoxy and flox for a fix.<\/p>\n

\"Lower<\/a><\/p>\n

Here are all the emp tips sealed and primed with K36 primer to protect them until time for paint.<\/p>\n

\""Finished"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m awaiting delivery of the avionics harness from Approach Fast Stack so I decided to tackle a task I’ve been avoiding for more than 13 years – fitting fiberglass tips to the horizontal stabilizer, elevators, vertical stabilizer and rudder. I’ve … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,4,5,13,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elevators","category-empennage","category-horizontal-stabilizer","category-rudder","category-vertical-stabilizer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mightyrv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mightyrv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mightyrv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mightyrv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mightyrv.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3842"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mightyrv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3862,"href":"https:\/\/mightyrv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3842\/revisions\/3862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mightyrv.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mightyrv.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mightyrv.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}