I’m going to start working on my gear leg fairings and wheel pants soon, but I need to get the plane up in the air in a level flight attitude to do that. I could use the plane jacks I made, but those jack behind the CG, so you need to hold the tail down when jacking. Any screw up here could tip the plane onto its nose. Instead, I picked up a shop crane from Harbor Freight so that I can lift the front of the plane by the engine mount and then jack up the aft end of the plane using one of my plane jacks. This required some assembly, so I knocked that out tonight.
While unscrewing one of my lower empennage fairings, the Click Bond nutplate I was using popped loose from the inside of the horizontal stabilizer skin. I managed to fish it out using the hook on the end of my inspection camera. Unfortunately, this is not made of a ferrous metal or I could have just used a magnet. I’m going to replace this with a rivnut which should be much more secure.
The left side lower empennage fairing was still sitting a little bit below the level of the upper fairing, so I added a bit more glass. Once it’s really close, I’ll use some filler on both pieces to make a totally smooth joint.
