Empennage endgame
Hours: 0.8 | Posted in Empennage, WingsMinnesota Wing meeting was this afternoon at Crystal Airport; spent a couple hours and talked with several folks from the local area. The weather wasn’t the best, so only a couple fly-ins showed up. 7A builder and RV Hotline editor Bob Collins has a write-up with pictures here…if you look carefully, you can see my arm & leg.
Installed the trim tab motor when I got home, and spent some more time staring at the elevators before disassembling the empennage in preparation for storage. Not entirely sure how I’ll store them yet, but I believe they will go into the attic and either rest in the trusses or lay on some old blankets that I have up stored up there. I thought about hanging on the wall, but that seems like more work, and I would eventually like to put up shelves along the upper walls of the shop. I put the appropriate bolts/washers/nuts (loosely, not tightened into the locking portion) in the brackets on the HS & VS, to avoid the inevitable question “now where did I put those bolts?!” when it comes time to mount them up later.
Also began to poke through the wing kit, removing packing paper and discovering interesting bits like fuel caps, fuel senders, tie-down bars (I’m gonna need to get me a tap for those), wingtip lenses, and nice golden spars. The next session will likely be wing inventory, cleaning up the workspace, and stashing the wing parts. The hardware bag for the wing kit is the size of a Target sack…might need another multi-drawer storage box. The wing components seem very thick (skins, ribs, etc) after being used to the relatively lightweight tail surfaces.
