- I made a lot of progress getting the vertical stabilizer lined up and mounted but it was slow going.
- I started out clamping and drilling the aft vertical stab bracket to the fuselage. Unfortunately after drilling and bolting it down I found that the vertical stab angle was slightly off. I made a couple of different sized shims and got it back to perfect again.
- The plans call for the leading edge of the vertical stab to be offset 1/4" and they have you add a washer to one of the bracket bolts. However the rudder hinge line needs to be perfectly straight and when you add the washer it changes. There was a lot of back and forth because everything is related so moving one thing changes another, etc.
- When I got it close to lined up with the offset and hinge line I found that I was not comfortable with the edge distance on the factory f-781 plate . I tried making a shim but the edge distance problems remained. I ended up making a slightly oversized F-781.
- I'm very happy with the new F-781. Lots of edge distance around the bolt holes and room to work with.
- I got the new F-781 drilled to the horizontal stabilizer and called it a day.
New F-781 connector plate drilled to horizontal stab:
Bending new to match the old:
Making a shim for the original connector plate:
Drilling vertical stab bracket / elevator stop to fuselage (in retrospect the clamps I used were not strong enough and did not fully compress the various pieces which led to the stab angle changing - not a big deal to fix though):
