I've been chipping away at fiberglass for the last week. It's a lot of unobservable progress. The empennage fairing is a pretty bad fit, so it's taken a lot of heat and massaging to get it to at least fit well enough to match drill to the skins. With the grey gelcoat on the fiberglass it's impossible to see the existing holes in the aluminum, so I located them by drawing lines through the holes on the skins and then transferring that to the fairing.
The fairing fits decently now, but to really get it to fit well, I'll have to butter up the underside with micro and lay it onto the aluminum to get it to mold to shape.
The front of the fairing is held on by screws that go into the rear bulkhead (nutplates). That was either not called out in the earlier plans or I missed it. I have to drill out a couple of rivets in the bulkhead and use those holes for the screws. I got the upper nutplates riveted on, but haven't done the lower ones yet. Those are down by the longeron and are in a very awkward place for riveting from the inside. I'll get it done, but I didn't feel like dinging the skins today, so moved on to other fiberglass.
The tips of the horizontal stab are caps that have to be cut to fit the shape of the forward elevator tips. Of course the elevator tips aren't straight across, so matching the angle to the horizontal stab tips is a little messy. On the left side, I completely goofed up the cut line, so I've currently got fiberglass curing to extend the cut edge so I can try again later. I took it a bit slower on the right side. I'm still not happy with it, but it's better at least. There is a ton of shaping to do though. The horizontal stab tips are open on the aft side, so once I have the fitting I also have to fiberglass in the back to close them.
