Section 12 Empennage Fairing Repairs

RV14 Build April 21th-May3

Empennage Fairings

So to recap, I cracked an elevator fairing and cut the horizontal stab tips too short. To repair the horizontal stabs I need to build back up the fiberglass. Here is my plan.

1. Make a mold

I used insulation from home depot, If I was going to try again, I would try expanding foam instead and see how that works.

2. Make a patch from the mold.

 3. Bond the patch with epoxy and flux.

4. Fiberglass the patch on. I used several small strips to build up the gap then a larg piece to cover everything on the inside and outside.

5. Now that it seems to actually be working, repeat 1-4 for the other fairing.

6. Trip the fairing correctly this time.

6. Glass in the fairing Cap. This is the same process I used on the vertical stabilizer cap. Make a 2 layer fiber glass sheet, cut it to fit the shape, tape to hold and epoxy, once dry fiberglass on the inside to bond.

7. Sand....

8. Fill with micro and epoxy and sand

9. Repeat step 8 until you can't take it anymore.

10. Finally, fill with just epoxy, let it sit for and hour, scrape off and put on another layer, scrape off again after an hour and hope it filled all the pin holes.

11. Repeat step 10 until all the pin holes are gone.

Congratulations, you just saved yourself $100 by not buying new fairings and learned some new skills. Now time to fix the elevator fairing. 

After the crack was patched and sanded. I tried to level and smooth this one with regular bondo to see how that works.

After a bunch of sanding. I still had to go back to steps 9 and 10 for the repair above.

Empennage Fairing 30 Hours