Category Archives: Aft Fuselage

Time: 4 Hours

Yesterday Vans aircraft came out with a new service letter that applied to the RV-8. It appears they have had some completed aircraft have issues with the skin on the sides of the fuselage at the very tail end. The problem stems from rapid turns on the ground while hitting bumps causing a side load to the skin. The few aircraft had some creasing of the skin in the affected area. So Vans came up with a fix which adds a piece of angle aluminum riveted to the skin at an angle. This helps carry the increased stress of side loads. There isn’t a requirement to complete this step but recommended. When I got up this morning we had already planned on moving the fuselage over to the paint shop.

I asked the painter if he would mind me working on the fix while in his hangar and he didn’t have an issue with that. His hangar is only a block away from our house/hangar so moving tools back and forth wasn’t an issue. The install was pretty straight forward and allowed me to buck some rivets which I hadn’t done in a while. I didn’t take many photos as it was hot and I didn’t want to stop working so I wasn’t in the painters way. He spent most of the day laying out the left wing paint masks and figuring all his measurements.

Here is a look at the two angle pieces I created and in place on the outside of the skin for drilling purposes. Once they were all done I cleaned the edges and primed them before riveting them in place. I’m glad this service letter came out when it did and I could complete it before the painting started.

Time: 4 Hours

Glenn had a great idea for his fairing to prevent it from scratching the paint when being removed as well as making it easier to remove. Here you can see the aft “wings” of the fairing descending below the level of the stabilizer. 

Since I made the fairing one piece I had the grab and flex up these wings so they cleared the stabilizer as your slid the fairing forward. Glenn had an idea to extend the aluminum inspection panel cover up and aft and cut off the part of the fairing in this area. So I grabbed some 0.025″ sheet and marked out the area using the original piece as a template. 

Using the fairing as a template unmarked out the areas that needed to be removed and the area of the fairing I wanted to cut off. 

After cutting the extra off I drilled two holes through the fairing and the underlying aluminum that will allow screws to go through into nutplates. 

Another cool idea Glenn had was to cut a 2″ hole in one side and glue a piece of clear plexiglass inside so that you have a window into this area so that inspecting the bolt on the flight controls will be very easy. 

Cool mod and makes taking the fairing off real easy. I forget how much work there is doing things like this but it sure is fun! 

Time: 4 Hours

While I was waiting for fiberglass to dry on the canopy skirts I worked on the empanada sharing over a few days. Basically just consisted of filling with epoxy and micro and sanding filling and sanding filling and sanding too I got to the perfect shape that I wanted. I used a filler primer to find all the pinholes, the voids left by air bubbles in the fiberglass epoxy, so that I could fill those which seems like a never ending process.

After filling 90% of the pinholes I primed and put into place. I will do some more finish work on this later down the road prior to painting.

As you can see it has a nice tight gaps all the way around and only a few screws to hold it in place which prevents the faring from puckering. I’m very happy with how this turned out and I can’t wait to see how it looks once painted!