This is the final section of the Empennage which is where I attach the fairings to the empennage pieces. Looking through the plans, some of it does not get completed until much later – after all the empennage parts are permanently attached to the airplane. I also had an impending delivery of the wing kit which I knew would distract my efforts and subsequently cause me to abandon the fun job of fiberglass work.

The fairings are fiberglass parts manufactured by Vans. From what I understand, these parts are light years ahead of previous RV model parts in that they are basically totally finished and ready for install. Previous models’ parts required a fair bit of fiberglass work before they could be put on the airplane.

Below is the fairing for the bottom of the rudder. The first step involved fiberglassing and blind riveting a bracket which will eventually hold the rear strobe light.

The fairing was then drilled with evenly spaced holes and the holes were used to match drill holes into the rudder bottom which eventually were used for the installation of nut plates. This failing is the only fairing attached with screws and nut plates. The rest are riveted to the respective part.

The fairing for the top of the rudder was attached using blind rivets after match drilling and dimpling the skins.

The fairings for the Elevator were attached in much the same manner.

The Wing Kit delivery was only hours away so the Fairing Attachment section was about to wind down to be completed later. The tips that attach to the Vertical and Horizontal Stabilizer required to be trimmed to match the HS and VS fairings, and then a fiberglass piece needed to be fabricated to go into the open side of the tip. Below is my attempt to do this where I layed up a couple of pieces of fiberglass cloth with epoxy and then covered it with a peel ply layer (to be removed after curing leaving a smooth finish). The results of this are to be determined later because ABF Freight is knocking on my door….