More ribs

What can I say? I've not been working much on Goat recently. Sadly, the Sandlin main site is down too :-( Instead, I've been making composite discus-launch glider pods and just starting to make molded horizontal tail mounts. The techniques have certainly been perfected by others, but I'm finding it rather rewarding to improve my own skills. Each fuselage is taking about an hour of prep, an hour of layup, and a half hour of cleanup. The tail mounts are still slow, with only one flyable part out of the mold thus far. Thought I'd share a picture of the current inventory, which doesn't include the two I've given away to friends.

I did do a little work on Goat today and over the last week between test flights at work. I finished putting the other graphite rod in the long rib blank and sometime over the week cut and installed the four remaining ribs. Yesterday, I wrapped the ribs with fiberglass tape, using 3M Super 77 to make the process easier. And this afternoon, I cut eight strips of peel-ply and epoxied all the ribs. A little cleanup a few hours ago and the horizontal tail is looking rather complete!

I know I shouldn't, but I looked into covering a bit. A coworker recommended the full Stitts Polyfiber treatment as the best investment ... but it's sooo expensive, on the order of the price of materials in the whole airframe. I'm wondering if I'm reading too much into the process, but I haven't found a great tutorial online to review and see if I'm just being overly conservative. Suggestions are welcomed. I have a long way to go before covering.

To do:
* finally remake the last two cabane truss members I've been meaning to do
* make a jig and try bending a new keel tube, make a replacement fuselage carry-through assembly and match drill several existing bolt locations
* drill the top tail attachment in the re-built upper tail tube (*mega alignment needed*)
* finish gluing the foam crush supports in the vertical tail
* final drill the vertical tail lower control rod guide and rivet it on
* make the horizontal tail struts

That's plenty for now...