Got back in the shop tonight and the first business of order was getting the laid up empennage fairing off of the empennage. I think that clear packing tape is one of the best mold release you can use if the contour is such that it can be applied to the surface. The problem is that it has it's limitations for surface contours. In this case it worked well due to the straight or gently curved surfaces the tape laid straight and smooth.
Using my dad's small pocket knife that I inherited and is always in my work clothes pocket, I was able to gently use it to slide along the fairing while placing a little tension on the fairing itself. The process worked well and the fairing came off in about 10 minutes.
After removing the fairing I used my Sharpie to draw some initial clean up lines and trimmed the fairing and did some general clean up. I then clecoed the fairing back in place and checked the fit.
All in all it really looked good. I began to look at the lines on the airplane and figure out where I wanted to do the final trims. I started marking the fairing with a mechanical pencil (believe it or not it can be erased pretty much if you need to make changes).
After getting the lines on and where I felt they looked right I sent Rick a Marco to review it....Rick has a natural eye for "making things look good" (after all he IS an engineer} but he has a natural ability to do so.....anyway he called me and we discuss a couple of possibilities which I will play with and make a final decision on the final cut lines!
