Neil’s Blog

Here are the new elevators and horizontal stabilizer:

I decided pretty early on to try something new instead of using the stock Weedhopper tail section. My design has a few interesting features that should prove useful. More on those later.

Hal did all the sewing by hand on a 25-year old Kenmore sewing machine… The 3.9 ounce Dacron fabric and UV thread were bought from Hang ‘Em High Fabrics (part #’s 3.9 and T46-1-W) — we ended up spending $157 on these. There were no premade patterns to use so the dimensions were transferred directly to the fabric. Trying to get both surfaces drum-tight wasn’t easy — which is one of the reasons the tail section has taken so long. There were many other problems along the way, but the pieces turned out great in the end.

We will be using Drifter hinges on the elevator. Placing them at 45° lowers the gap from 1″ down to 0.4″, plus it allows us to ‘fold’ the elevators up for storage or transport.

The rudder is done but the fabric hasn’t been permanently installed yet. I’ll be making another small update Sunday or so to show the complete tail section installed on the airframe.