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Steve's CH750 Cruzer (N750SB)
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Date: 7-20-2016
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Number of Hours: 4.50
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Manual Reference:
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Brief Description: Cleco'd skeleton, fitting skin
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While I'm waiting to hear from Roger about my elevator issues, I decided to continue in tail feathers mode and work on the vertical fin. I had pulled all the tail parts when I was unloading the kit from the trailer, so it was pretty much ready to go. Surprise! No assembly guide from Zeinth and no section on the vertical fin in the HobebuiltHELP Horizontal tail DVD (I guess thats why its called the Horizontal Tail). A search of the Zenith Cruzer forum for "fin" brought up some good hints, tips, and cautions, that should be required reading before starting. The plans really don't tell you everything you need to know in this case.
I began by clecoing the skeleton, which was pretty straightforward. Next I experimented with how I was going to get the skin folded over correctly. The skin is very stiff and doesn't want to fit easily. The only provided holes in the skin are pilot holes for the top rib. So I drew a centerline on the top rib flange to aid in aligning it. I ended up using every clamp in my arsenal and yes, that is a bag of tire chains and tow chains on pads holding the skin down on the lower rib. The skin IS that stiff. The whole thing is sitting on the skin packing foam and some cardboard to provide some give on the bottom and help shape the skin. That is where I quit for the day. Hopefully overnight the skin will pick up some memory of its fitted shape, but probably not. The bottom rib needs to be kept at 90 degrees to the spar, but with no holes to fix the rib angle I ended up using duct tape on the bottom flange to maintain the angle on that side. The lower rib nose tip isn't touching the skin, but the pre-drilled hole locations are all flush to the skin, so it probably won't get much better.
The infamous, undocumented flange overlap is currently about 12mm, which seems to be in the neighborhood of what the forum is finding.
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Used just about every clamp
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Duct tape on bottom keeps rib in place
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About 12mm overlap
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