goatflieg
Well Known Member
One of the things that I've pondered during the construction of my empennage is that since I don't have my fuselage yet, it would be difficult to do a mock-up of the completed empennage. I'm currently working on my elevators; everything else is complete (less fiberglass work), and I wanted to have the ability to hang my rudder and elevators properly, instead of just laying the components on my benches and slipping the components together. So I decided to do something even crazier than building my own airplane... I designed and built my own independent empennage stand. I spent 25 hours putting this thing together; there was a lot of trial-and-error fitting and redesigning... but I'm very happy with the result. Aside from the fact that the horizontal incidence may not be dialed in, I managed to establish the relationship between the horizontal and vertical stabilizers fairly accurately... and they are held very securely, so hanging the rudder and elevators will pose no problem at all. I had to share this with the group. Yeah... it's nuts... but it made for a nice change of pace, and it will be a very useful fixture until I get my quickbuild fuselage next spring. After that, I'll consider renting it out to any interested parties...