Empennage finishing

[mbetti]

I was wondering if anyone has any pics of mounting the completed empenage to a table. I guess I would like to get all the fiberglass stuff fitted, adjust bearings, drill elevator horns, etc. Not sure the best way to clamp these pieces.
Mike

 

[bruceh]

I would just wait until the fuselage is ready for the attaching of the tail. You can get ahead of yourself if you don't follow the progression of the plans. I had to significantly trim the forward bottom cap of the rudder to flow with the lines of the fuselage. If I had done this before I had the fuselage it would have looked horrible.

 

[Hens07]

what about an empennage cradle? I have heard of people making cradles/stands similar in fashion to the ones used for the wings. Anyone have any pics or details of some plans to build one?

 

[jmjula]

I was wondering if anyone has any pics of mounting the completed empenage to a table. I guess I would like to get all the fiberglass stuff fitted, adjust bearings, drill elevator horns, etc. Not sure the best way to clamp these pieces.

As said above, you could fit the elevators now, but I would wait on the VS and Rudder. I am just doing this now on the fuse, but if I were going to do this on a table, I would make some sort of mount like on the fuse.

what about an empennage cradle? I have heard of people making cradles/stands similar in fashion to the ones used for the wings. Anyone have any pics or details of some plans to build one?

I don't have any pictures of mine on my site. It is just a series of 1x1s to hold all the emp pieces vertically. I'll see if I can snap a picture later tonight before I have to head out.

 

[BSwayze]

I was wondering if anyone has any pics of mounting the completed empenage to a table. I guess I would like to get all the fiberglass stuff fitted, adjust bearings, drill elevator horns, etc. Not sure the best way to clamp these pieces.
Mike

Mike, I have some pictures here on my log page showing the drilling of the elevator horns and some other tasks that you can do now. It was done on a bench top. I waited until these parts were mounted to the fuselage, though:

Mounting the Empennage

I did a lot of the fiberglass work on the empennage parts back when I was waiting on my wing kit. That's okay for the most part, but the one you definitely want to wait on is the rudder bottom. I spent a lot of time getting it real nice, as you can see here, but it was a BIG mistake! I'm going to have to trim it a lot to make it match the bottom of the fuselage and do all that work over:

 

[BSwayze]

what about an empennage cradle? I have heard of people making cradles/stands similar in fashion to the ones used for the wings. Anyone have any pics or details of some plans to build one?

Andrew,

I made a couple of simple cradle pieces, to mount to the middle of my wing cradle. It's the perfect storage place for the Horizontal Stabilizer and the elevators. They sit upright in between my wings. It's kinda hard to see in these pics, but if you look close you can get the idea:

Here's a face-on picture, taken when I was riveting the bottom skins on my wing:

I still had to find a place to store the rudder and the VS, though. They are currently hanging on my wall.

 

[Hens07]

Thanks for the pics Bruce. Never thought of adding onto the wing cradle... I see some more wood working in my future this summer when the wing kit arrives!

 

[jmjula]

what about an empennage cradle? I have heard of people making cradles/stands similar in fashion to the ones used for the wings. Anyone have any pics or details of some plans to build one?

Here is my emp 'cradle':