Alright, let's do it...let's wrap up these empennage tips. I had bought a sheet of 1/4" semi-rigid foam from Spruce a few weeks ago (P/N 01-13550), and today I cut out chunks of it to cap off the open ends of the emp tips. This took some iterative fitting to get it right, but the foam is easy to work with...stiff enough that you can just slice it with a blade.
An inside shot, dunno why. The little chewed-upness on the end of the foam is where it passes over a rivet head on the end HS rib.
I used simple 5-minute epoxy to glue the foam in place. Unlike what it looks like, the foam is about 1/8" from the opening, leaving plenty of space for filler and glass.
I also did this for the right elevator tip right before riveting it on. Here I had just finished riveting the top.
This thing pulled together very nicely! I was really surprised. It looked really gappy when it was just clecoed together, but the rivets really did their job well as they compressed. This isn't going to be nearly as hard to glass and fill and feather as I thought it might be.
Tonight I laid out and drilled the rivet holes in the canopy side skirts. I'm just about ready to finish those up by drilling them to the frame, and then back-drilling the screw holes. I just need some help getting the canopy bubble onto the plane and I can do that.
