Rudder Stab - Part 3

This aircraft is to be fitted with a red beacon located at the top of the rudder stab and a Aviolight beacon was selected based on its low weight of 40 grams and compact dimension's.

Red Beacon

An ABS plastic former was machined and glued into the factory supplied fiberglass tip. It was hoped that all it would require is a small amount of filler to be finish it off - this was not to be the case.

With the ABS former in place, automotive filler was added, then sanded with 60 grit painter's paper wrapped around a dowel. Additional filler was added and the sanding repeated then repeated again. The images of this process are to ugly for public publication so I restricted images to the final product which was the goal.

Fitting to Stab
As all the other faring fitted with little effort it was anticipated that this one would be no different - WRONG!

The fairing was fitted and when viewed from a firewall looked like a caricature of the Cat in the Hat. Examination of the stab skins showed that they did not line up so this had to be corrected. This should have been picked up at assembly were the leading edge skin could have been corrected easily.

Refitted the faring and it now looked like the Cat's had a hard night at the local bar, re-examination showed the base was now not square to the fairing vertical, to fix this the base was sanded to square.

At this point the next issue became apparent - the ABS former was square to the old base and with the fairing square now square to the new base but it now looked like the Cat had put the hat back on after a full week binge.

Misalignment of leading edge

At this point the builder responded by applying a series of incantations based on dubious parenthood and upbringing and after a cooling off more bog was added in anticipation of a round of fresh sanding at the next work secession. This capped three of the most unproductive weeks I have had on the project - ugh!!