Tip: Working with the OEM empennage fairing - Photos

I am well down the road on my RV project. Lately I have been in sustained orbit around the unfriendly looking empennage fairing planet looking for a place land my space ship. I read posts now and again complaining about the poor fit of the empennage fairing. Mine didn't fit very well either. Sad, it looks to be a very well made kit part. The unpleasant thought of having to build from scratch and becoming a modeling clay student had me standing in my shop one evening enjoying a microbrew and eyeballing the kit fairing on my airplane. The aft end looked to be an exact fit. The front end was all off. The leading edge of the vertical stabilizer was too far back when the horizontal was placed in the best position. Also, the leading edges of the horizontal stabilizer seemed too high, causing the fairing to splay out when pushed down on the fuselage turtle deck. I decided to cut it down the middle and see how the fit would be if some material was removed in the middle. What did I have to loose? BINGO!! I could see the fit was going to be spot on. All I had to do was remove some material in the middle and glass it back together.



I continued to remove material in the middle until the edges generally rested on the aluminum. Next; the modeling clay form underneath. Not too difficult to work with. A metal edge was very useful. Thin shavings of clay come right off by scraping. I just used the edge of a six inch metal ruler. Cover the whole thing with plastic packing tape, a little wax and the form was ready. I then feathered the edges of the fairing splice. A sanding drum on the drill press made quick work of this step.



Continuted in Part 2 of 3

Working with the OEM empennage fairing - Photos - Part 2 of 3

The fairing edges didn?t quite sit tight against the underlying clay form so I taped strands of unwaxed dental floss across the splice. This snugged it down on the clay form. I glassed over the dental floss.



I read a good, recent post by DanH regarding working with glass. Thanks Dan!! Having very little experience working with this stuff before, I just did what Dan suggested. As per DanH, I used epoxy and crowfoot glass cloth, two layers. I then brush a nice thick coating of resin on and then put on peel ply. I had never tried peel ply before.



Continued in Part 3 of 3

Working with the OEM empennage fairing - Photos - Part 3 of 3

The next morning when I removed the peel ply, I came to realize how important that stuff is. The peel ply makes it all nice and uniform with no lumps, stray fibers or glass weave showing through. A must do step for exterior surface glassing. The photos show the fairing before any surface sanding. Yesterday I started at 8:30 AM and was finished and out the door to my son?s soccer game at 12:30. Maybe this post will help a few other weary RV builder space travelers orbiting the hostile looking empennage fairing planet. Feedback and suggestions welcome.

WOW!!

Great writeup Brian....thanks a lot...inspiring pictures for all of us "fiberglass challenged" builders.

Thanks again,

Brian

i hate to notice this now, but did you trim the edges off before you tried to fit the fairing? I actually fit mine last night, and it fit exactly like you posted until I trimmed it. I noticed in your picture that the cut lines seemed to still be stamped on indicating that you might not have trimmed it? Anyways I just kept cutting until it fit. It worked for me.

Jarvis