Tail Feathers . . .

"Tail feathers" is the common term used for the tail section of a model airplane.  The proper French term is Empanage.  The tail feathers are composed of the elevator and the rudder.

I have finally finished reconstruction of the fuselage (another French term) where the empanage mounts.  The rudder, the vertical part was not in play, it was just fine.  But the structure where the elevator would be glue on had several cracks, on one side it was completely apart where the control rod comes out of the fuselage that attaches to control surface of the elevator.  I got the pieces back together using CA glue.  CA is not sufficiently strong enough to counter the large loads experienced by the empanage.

So I covered over the cracks with fibreglass treatment.  Now it is quite strong, stronger than original construction, it will not break in that area again.  I had to do work on both sides of the fuselage and along the top next to the rudder.  All finished now.

And I have covered one side, a difficult location to replace covering as control rods stick and it is hard to get the Monokote iron in place to activate the glue to hold the covering in place.  So I removed one rod, the elevator rod.

Well getting the rod back in place is quite a problem.  The rod travels through a tube and tube is no longer held in place and drifts around inside the fuselage.  It is close but not exactly correct and since it is floating is hard to get it back out the hole.  Just a task that takes time and patience to get done.  Frustrating as it takes multiple attempts to get it done.  That is the down side of model building.

Once I get the rod out and back where it should be, I will take on the rudder rod.  It is in place but I will remove it to get at the covering in that area.  Since the tube is still held in place where it should be it should be quite easy to do.

After the covering in that area is finished and the rods are back in place I will tackle gluing on the new (actually an old one off a long since salvage aircraft) elevator.  I will have to deal with the tail wheel which has to travel through the elevator and attach to the rudder.  So as the rudder moves, the tail wheel moves.  Simple but sometimes a real pain in the butt to get set up and in place.  It has to be done along with the gluing.  It can get to be tedious.

Well I will go out and try to fish out the control rod.