Tail Gear, Rudder and Miscellaneous

Today was a big day. This morning I went over to help Paul put the wings on his Kitfox. He has some trimming to do for the wings to fold properly. After that, I came home to get back to work on mine.

First off, I removed the rear fuselage rotisserie. I had to do this to mount the rudder and to be able to turn the tail wheel straight. I leveled the head rack by putting the tail wheel on a box with some extra wood to get the fuselage level in preparation for installing the "Star and Bars" on the tail. With an excuse to use my new laser level, I checked the alignment of the SuperSTOL decal on the side to see how close I was. When I installed it I just used a tape measure, turns out I was spot on. The laser will make installing the tail stripes much easier or, at least to get them level.

I painted the tail gear pivot bushing collars yesterday and installed the cotter pins today. 

I also installed the tail wheel lock cable, grip locked the cable, greased the pin and verified that it works correctly.

Then I installed the rudder. I have a couple of things that need to be done to be finished with it. I am rethinking the routing of the tail strobe wire. I had originally planned to route it through the inspection port for the elevator but after looking at it mounted, I'm thinking about a more direct route. I could cut a small hole in the tail to route the wire directly which would put it lower (under the horizontal stab) and out of the way of the elevator Jesus bolt area. I am also upgrading the rudder cable to 1/8"  and need to route it into the fuselage. This requires a couple of holes to be punched in the fabric.

Next up was to finish the shock mounts. Here are a couple of pics of the second pass of SuperFill from yesterday.

I debated about trying to sand the SuperFill to clean it up a bit but decided that I would probably mess it up and make it look worse, so I just left it as is. After painting, they look like excess weld material and really don't look bad. They are certainly far better being sealed up. Now I can mount the main landing gear tomorrow.

Lastly, I mounted the required passenger warning label on the panel.