How to climb in the tailcone 101
I just went thru this about 2 months ago because the plastic tubing split and came off one of the static ports. Others may have better ideas than me but here is how I did it. From home depot two 1X10's about 6' long were purchased. These go insided the tail cone on both sided of the elevator push tube, one to crawl on and the other to balance on. This keeps you from putting any pressure on the bottom skins and doing damage. Then a stool was placed under the rear area on the tail cone with an tire that came off a while back was put onto the top of the stool with towels on top of the tire to keep it from scuffing the plane. Then the wheels were chocked to keep the plane from rolling. The most important part was visualizing the entire job and every possible scenario and/or tool that could be needed once inside the tailcone so it wouldn't be an in and out affair to reduce the aggravation and possibiltiy of damaging the plane. Lastly I had a second person there in case the thing got away from me and went tail down on me. Try to imagine your plane tail down and nose high with you now likely to have fallen and are face down in the back of the tail cone with your backside pointing skyward. Just how hard do you think it will be to back your way out? Could you do it? I figured that I had a better chance that my spotter would finally stop laughing and call somebody for help than for me to back my way out. And lastly, the spotter who is a much smaller person and very agile volunteered to go in the cone for me and take care of it. So while he fixed the leak I sipped from a mocha frap from Starbucks and pondered my good fortune. This turned out to be a very good way to address this problem.
Good luck,
