Yearly Archives: 2020


Empennage Misc Old

I started off the night adding some additional fiberglass to the vertical stabilizer tip. Unfortunately with my hands messy with resin I didn’t grab any photos.

Next thing on the docket was to trim the empennage fairing in two places. First I trimmed about half an inch behind the elevator horns to provide clearance. I didn’t need that much, but its a bit tough to get on and off so a little extra was worthwhile. I also trimmed about a quarter inch from under the front portion that curls under the horizontal stabilizer. This was purely to make it easier to get on and off.

With the empennage fairing almost compete, I turned my attention to the rudder bottom fairing. I put it in place quickly to check the clearance with the tailwheel arm installed to check clearance. I’m pretty sure all the double-wide RV’s have to trim the bottom fairing per instructions. I’m not able to find any mention of that on the RV-8 plans or sites. The stock part does clear, but with very little room to spare.

I decided to trim just a little bit to give it that nice margin of error. I did about an 1/8 of an inch at the front and tapered to nothing at the back.

 

View of the bottom left empennage fairing near access panel