Monday, October 18, 2021

Adding some fancy stuff.

This Mo'Best has flap and elevator fairings. They can be troublesome to get them perfectly straight in line with the center line of the wing or stab. The stab is 1/8 inch thicker than the elevators and the wing needs another method to center the flap fairings. That's why I mark the wing chord line on the fuselage side early in the building process. The stab is flat but thicker than the elevators. I used a dial caliper and measured the thickness of the stab. Then measured the thickness of the elevator. Subtract those measurements and divide the answer by two to get the shim thickness that will center the elevator in the stab. Do that for each side, my measurements were a bit different. The left elevator needed a .065 shim top and bottom the right needed .068 top and bottom. I got som two pieces scrap 1/4 inch balsa and clamped them to the stab in the area of the fairing. Then slid the fairing and shim sandwich between the 1/4 inch pieces, installed the elevator and fit the fairing to the fuselage concentrating on the gap between the fairing and elevator as that may need filling to get the proper/good looking gap. Both sides on mine needed about 1/32 fill. An interesting note is that the fairings have a curve to match the taper of the aft end of the fuselage so be careful which side you sand on. I used a straight edge, my trusty 6 inch scale, to double check the position of the fairing to the stab. Now you will find that the elevator can't be removed. You will have to rotate the elevator almost verticle to clear the fairing. The flap fairings will get added a bit later using the mark I made to center them. Using the stab fairings to set the flap fairings simply wont work.

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