The tail is almost on

I'm making great strides on the vertical tail, almost to the point of getting it put on the fuselage! To start, this is where I am with the vertical tail. I'm out of 1/4" tubing for the truss structure, but what I have done gives me a good idea that adding the other trusses will be pretty trivial. I did 3M the glass tape on the two rudder ribs that had not been finished. I will indeed be taking out that one finished rib and redoing it.

Here is a closeup on the lower rudder connection area. You can see the vertical tail ribs made of 1/4" tubing and the different composite rib on the rudder. The lower rudder hinge area is that crazy bolt area in the middle of the photo. I put the rudder stop blocks in yesterday too, though one is a touch longer than the other. I think I'm shooting for about 20-30deg of rudder deflection until I can find the recommended throws. I also pinched the tail skid with the intention of rounding it off somehow later.

I also have the top rudder connection pretty well completed. The hinge was a piece of cake part with a slight bend in it and the tapered rib on the vertical tail is the same as on the lower side. You can also see the horizontal tail connection part, yet to have a modification to further thread the bolt for a captured part. The rudder rib in the lower left hand of the photo is the one I'll remove and redo. It might look decent from this zoom level, but I'm just not happy with it in person. In other news, I have not put the elevator control rigging slot in the upper boom yet (that would be between the rudder post and the h-stab mount). I'll probably wait that one out until I start all the rigging.

To mount the vertical stabilizer to the fuselage, I made a little tooling jig to hold the mounting flanges the proper 1.75" distance apart. This way, I would be assured that the tail boom would fit perfectly and the fuselage holes would be match drilled to suit. Unfortunately, where I put the bend in the mounting parts meant the bolts would physically conflict with other bolts in the area, so I have to redo those parts. This next time, I'm going to leave the fuselage end undrilled until I can hold them both up to the fuselage and ensure proper clearance. I am pretty happy with the jig though! It looks ungainly, but it worked great for the test fitting.

Finally, I leave you with a shot showing the temporarily clamped beast all put together. I don't have a wonderful place to take photos, so it's a busy background, but I think the idea still gets across .... the tail is almost on! It's remarkable to put it all together like this and realize this is actually going to be an airplane :-) I'm excited to finish off the little material I have remaining and do some cleanup on the tail section. I think within the week I should be able to get the v-tail actually mounted to the fuselage and start mounting the horizontal stab too. Perhaps I'll work on the tail ribs some more as well and feel like I'm actually finishing something off. Right now I sort of feel like I've started all the major sections (less wings of course) and completely finished none of them. Perhaps the rudder should be first to finish. Who cares though, I'm having fun :-)