Check this out. This is a brand new tailcone skin, out of the box, that Linas ordered for his fuselage. He wasn't very happy with how the holes weren't lining up in the tailcone skin area, so he had ordered a spare skin in case he ended up wanting to redo it. I was messing around with something when Linas called me over and said, "Hey, look at this!"
The tailcone skin is really badly formed. It's twisted, it's assymmetrical, it's ugly.
Here you can see the side profile, where the left side rises higher than the right.
Another crystal clear view.
No wonder Linas had been having trouble with his fuselage parts not lining up perfectly. You thought these match-drilled components were just supposed to "shake-n-bake" together? Yeah, think again. There was obviously a flaw in the tailcone skin production process. What's funny is that the skin Linas used came in his fuselage kit which arrived over a year ago. The spare replacement skin he ordered just came recently, like a week or two ago.
So this problem may be very widespread. Linas asked me if I had any problems in this area, and I didn't. My tailcone skin was perfectly symmetrical...so this problem is a recent one. Check your parts before you start tinkering with them. I don't doubt that Van's would replace them if you wanted them to, and it's not like you can't just massage the piece into submission if you have to. Hey, builders used to have to roll their own parts anyway, right? Yeah, well, in the day of CNC match-drilled stuff, we pay for high quality kit components...and we want quality components for our money.
Ok, back to what little I accomplished on my plane today. I gave the shear/brake/roller a tune-up, and I fab'd a little bracket where I mounted my headset battery packs. Until now, the battery packs have been free to swing and slam around back there. Lame. I finally got off my butt and made this little velcro pad for 'em. Much better.
