After many hours of body filling and sanding I am now happy with the tail shroud. It has a nice and smooth transition to the fuse.
The carbon plates were finally installed in the lower tailwheel area.
I am pretty happy with the way this job went considering the limited access to the inside of the tail.
I've still got the bottom inside edge to flock and glass but this was upside down when I was doing the rest so I've left it till later.
I used a shed-load of flock down the sides of the carbon plates to make a very strong bond between them and the fuse sides.
As you can see I used lots of parcel tape everywhere to stop any flock going on the tailwheel fork or bearings - that would not be good.
Next job will be bonding in a rib which will act as a mud guard for the front section.
The rear mudguard will be another rib bonded into the rudder.
As you will see below I tried drilling out some holes in the rear baggage compartment cover - to make sure I have good through-draft in the cockpit area.
Kevlar has a lot of wonderful properties but 'easy to work with' is not one of them!
As you can see drilling makes a bit of a mess - there is no way to tidy up the holes. So I've cut that section out and replaced it with normal glass (2 layers) which should give a much nicer finish when I drill out the vent holes.
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| Drilling Kevlar... what a mess |
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| Packing tape everywhere prior to bonding in carbon plates |
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| 2 layers of glass to fill the hole - using cardboard wrapped with duct tape as a flat surface |
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| Bonding in the carbon plates |
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| Glass 'window' in Kevlar baggage compartment end cover |
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| Bonded in carbon plates |
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| Still got the lower section to flock and glass - plus a bit of tidying up to do |
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