Tailcone – Put it all together

Interesting night

1. Trial fit for horizontal stab to rear bulkhead (F-1211) in order to find appropriate washers. Manual says the washers on both sides of the hinges should be the same – either thin (AN960-416L) or thick (AN960-416). It turnes out that thin are too thin, and the thick ones are just a little bit too thick. After an hour of dancing around this stuff I decided to leave it and think about it. After some thinking, I decided to use the thin washers (AN960-416L). Here is the reason: The bushings HS-1210 are made of very soft aluminium. Even slight tightening of the bolts that they sit on, compresses them reducing the distance between the hinge brackets. So all I need to do is to tighten the bushing bolts after installing the stab in order to remove any tiny gap between the washers and the hinges. I still need to superglue the washers to the hinges 🙂

2. I have come across the first typo in the manual. So far the manual was perfect and I though I have screwed up something. It took me an hour of fiddling and searching Internet to confirm that the Sheer Clips (F-1284) on the page 10-03 marked incorrectly – the Left one should be Right and the Right should be Left. Funny enough, I found the posts about it on the VAF forum dated as far back as 2011 and the manual still has not been fixed. Well, I cant really criticize VANs – I hate writing documentation myself.

3. I have put bottom skins and bottom-left and bottom-right skins on the frames. Just clecoed them. Finally the fuselage is coming together.