Section 12 Empennage Fairings

RV14 Build April 14th-April 19th

Empennage Fairings

I wish I would have been more careful when I cut the fairings. I added a ton of work for myself, but as it turns out I'm waiting on my wings so I have plenty of time to mess up and sand and repeat to learn how to work with fiberglass. I spent over 40 hours on this section and I think 30 plus was just repairing the damage that I caused.

The plans start off by having you make sure the lip of the fiberglass is the correct depth and square. I found in the end that a large file was the best tool for this job.

Found a piece of metal for the thicknesses I needed and tested.

Squeezed one of the Elevator fairings too hard and cracked it. No problem, I thought this will give me the opportunity to learn how to make a fiberglass repair, this was my first mistake lol.

Sanded down the top of the old fiberglass to rep for the repair.

 Used the cutoff wheel on the Dremel to cut when needed.

Trimmed the rudder bottom fairing.

 Testing the rudder bottom fairing fit

Cutting the template to trim the rudder bottom fairing.

Cut is done.

Drove out the Aircraft Spruce and picked this up along with some cloth.

Setting up the Fairing repair, and Patch for the hole in the rudder bottom fairing.

Peel ply on, time to walk away. Im feeling fairly good right now. No idea of the pain in the ass yet to come in the form of filling and sanding.

Plug for the hole after the fiberglass set up.

 Trimmed and taped in place to apply epoxy flux then glass.

Countersinking the rudder top tip.

More flat fiverglass parts for the fairing caps.

Looking good so far.

Epoxy and flux to shape the rudder bottom fairing.

Glass the inside of the rudder bottom fairing to join the patch to the rest of the fairing. I used 3 pieces overlapped.

Forward Vertical stabilizer tip cap.

Tapped in place till the epoxy and flux cures. Same process as for the patch. Once this cures Ill glass the inside to bond it to the fairing.

Vertical Stabalizer tip installed.

Rudder top fairing installed.

I decided to build up the vertical stabilizer fairing with fiberglass bondo, mostly to try new things and see how they work. But I didn't like the way the lined up. The Vertical Stabilizer tip curved town in the aft, probably because how I drilled and installed it, but I wanted the top surfaces of the two fairings to be level so what the hell.

Using a nutplate as a guide to drill.

The nutplates are suppose to be dimpled besides the most forward is countersunk. I didn't read well and countersunk all of them. Im not too worried, and its an easy repair to replace the metal part the nutplates are attached to in the future.

The Horizontal Stabilizer with the fairings is 124.5" wide, just incase you wanted to know.

Second major mistake and the repair accounts for 30hrs of work I'm guessing. The plans have you cut about 6". So I didn't realize the elevator fairing has a slant rearward in it, leaving a huge gap.

The gab needs to be at least 0.125" these are much larger.

I decided it would be easier to make a whole new post about the repairs so see that if you are interested. Moving on to the empennage gap covers.

I thought this part would be hard, but I bent them with 2 pieces of wood and my eyeball on a protractor.

The fit before drilling.

Once you are working on these the plans make more sense. Drilling across to get the holes.

Close up of the drill bit coming through, then repeat for the other side.

Empennage Fairing 10 Hours