After two weeks of inactivity, construction has restarted. I'm offsetting the tail section, building in some left-rudder to compensate for propeller torque. This evening I rough-cut two of the 3/16" plates involved.
Rough-cut the two pieces of angle for the fin, and filed and dressed the two plates cut last night. Am utterly buggered.
Discovered that the angle from which I was fabricating the replacement fin brackets should have been 3/16" thick, not 1/8". A rethink on the whole approach. Now using a system similar or identical to that employed by Paul Watson, New Mexico. An additional 3/16" plate at each mount point is used to separate the brackets mounting the fin from the bolts anchoring the whole thing to the tail. Apart from being raised 3/16", the centre mounting is left unchanged, and no new brackets need to be fabricated.
Finished drilling the aft offset plate, and made the appropriate streamlining cuts.
Drilled, cut, dressed and mounted the forward offset plate. Installed both stablisers, and verified the support tube geometry still works.
We're about to disappear for two weeks, so I dragged the wee beastie outside and ran the engine. An interesting observation here after I put her away again - once you've got fuel aboard she starts to *smell* like an aircraft :)
