I knocked out covering of the two flaps. They were quick, being rectangular. Took just one evening each, and that was just enough time between getting home from work and needing to head to bed. I forgot how the covering task wasn't hard, just takes some time. Here's a mid-process shot.
The ailerons are now on the bench awaiting covering. Those should take a couple evenings since they're just a bit larger and also have the nice long curve near the tips. But I'll get to those later.
The tail needed some cleanup work before covering. It was dusty from sitting in the garage and was easy enough to wipe clean. I took off the flying wires, control cables, and brackets in preparation for installing the covering. Then I took a closer look at the foam spacers during this cleanup and just wasn't happy with them. The epoxy was cracking off the aluminum in places and just wasn't carefully applied back in May 2010. Instead of covering over this, it made more sense to take care of replacing it now.
After a punching out the foam and a bunch of scraping to remove the flaking epoxy, and some additional clean-up with isopropyl, the tail section looks much, much cleaner, and almost ready for covering.
This part needs to be replaced. It might be fine, but there is no reason to stick with a part I'm not satisfied risking my life on. I built this bracket to the specifications in the drawings, but apparently the hole in the horizontal stabilizer didn't align perfectly. Adding a shim washer made the fit work, but, yuck. I'll order some more aluminum channel and match drill the holes next time to not need the washers.
That's all for today.
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