Category: Fuselage

I started looking for other things to do and I decided to go ahead and rebuild the trim tab.  I wanted to take the fabric off of at least one elevator anyway to check for corrosion.  This gave me an excuse.  Elton hadn’t finished the trim tab and it had a bit of a rub.  I’m not sure how he planned to fix it but I decided that it’d be easy enough to make a new one.

The hinge material that I had didn’t let me use the existing holes that Elton had on the elevator so I cut that cross member off and made another.

I made a template from the existing tab.  It took a couple of tries but I finally got one that fits pretty well.

I gave the fuselage a good looking over and took a few pictures.  I think that I’m going to have to cut the fabric off of the fuselage, blast and re-prime it all. The metal looks pretty good where I can see it but there are enough places where there is corrosion that I think it’d be smart to clean it up and make it like new.

I also need to make a couple of modifications.  I’m not going to fit in the seat with a parachute so I need to adjust that geometry somehow and there is only one lap belt mount.  I intend to do some pretty serious aerobatics in this airplane so redundant lap belt is a requirement.

I hate to peel the fabric off because it is in really good shape.  It’s got to be done.